“State of the Internet” report highlights Internet trends worldwide, including strong growth in Asian usage, in social networking, video entertainment and in Google’s dominance of search.
In 1996, two-thirds of the world’s online population was in the United States; now, the U.S. accounts for only 21% of worldwide users, comScore notes. Internet usage in Asia and the Pacific rose 14% in the last year and will account for 42% of users in two years.
The total number of internet users worldwide is projected to reach $1 billion by March 2010: 4 out of every 10 will be in Asia, and only 2 out of 10 will be in North America.
There are 77.5 million more Internet users today than this time last year
Other key findings from the report:
China and South Korea are already seeing local providers give U.S. sites a run for their money – language may be part of the challenge, but also cultural preferences.
Broadband is driving faster usage growth outside the U.S. New adopters, particularly in emerging countries, are bypassing outmoded narrowband connections and going straight to high bandwidth.
Broadband facilitates multimedia and online entertainment, and those two categories will only continue to grow as the world online population grows – Witness Youtube.
Communication tools, e-mail and IM, are still the killer category of usage in all regions, followed by Social Connections and Multimedia Entertainment.
Travel and E-commerce are virtually non-existent outside of the developed world. Growth will take off once the proper infrastructure is developed, primarily in Asia Pacific.
Portals and vertical content categories, such as finance, health, autos, etc… enjoy moderate growth rates in the mid-teens.
Google is the dominant search brand in most countries, including most of Europe and Latin America, with a few significant exceptions — countries where Chinese, Korean, and Russian languages dominate.
Chinese language search engine Baidu currently ranks #3 in worldwide search market share, behind Google and Yahoo!
The number of worldwide visitors to social networking sites has grown 34 percent in the past year to 530 million, representing approximately 2 out of every 3 Internet users. MySpace and Facebook are in a tight battle for the global leadership position, each attracting more than 100 million visitors per month.
Online video has become the dominant online entertainment format, led by the global popularity of YouTube with more than 250 million visitors in January.
The Internet has become an important source of news for most Web users. The top 10 global news brands show great diversity between country of origin, including the U.S., U.K., China and South Korea.
Ad Networks are necessary for large players to expand the depth of their effective reach and will be increasingly gaining momentum, somewhat at the expense of branded sites.
The Ad Network consolidation race will soon turn global given the size of international audiences that could be aggregated.
The web already delivers 40% more advertising Gross Ratings Points than TV in the US, and more than twice as many ad impressions per user.
Online Video is growing fast, but still faces significant challenges of scale and monetization.
The Mobile Web is coming and will be a substantial source of usage with high speed access and friendlier devices. It is possible for it to eclipse the PC based web outside theUnited States.
A combined Yahoo! and Microsoft would reach over 173 million unique visitors (94% of the US audience), but would still be a distant second in search.
The full report
