The Internet is interlocked into mundane daily routines of households and businesses throughout the world. A majority of the world is online, and increasing numbers have access to broadband connections. Overall, users are employing the Internet for longer periods and pursuing an expanded range of personal and commercial activities.
"The digital economy experienced serious setbacks at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Starting in late 1999, the bursting of the Internet stock market bubble, coupled with a virtual meltdown in the telecom sector, brought financial difficulties and corporate scandals. Nevertheless, the expansion of Internet use proceeded without interruption. Consumer and public confidence in the Internet and telecom sectors has been maintained, fostering renewed growth and expansion", Gifford wrote.
The past ten years have seen a slowdown in the growth rate of the percentage of US adults who go online. Growth rates in the rest of the world, however, are still high, as the pent-up demand for Internet access is satisfied by improvements in technology that make it easier and cheaper to go online, the book reads.
In the past, the media was controlled by large companies, with news and entertainment originating by necessity from the few who had the means to distribute it. But now, individuals who go online are becoming the sources of information and entertainment as well as the recipients. This presents a challenge and an opportunity for the digital economy.
The US. Online Population
The percentage of American adults who go online is increasing, but a plateau may have been reached. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project surveys, the percentage of US adults who ever go online reached about 73 percent in April 2006. This represents an increase of only 10 percentage points since April 2002, making for a much slower yearly growth rate than during the 1995-2002 period, when the percent of US adults who go online increased from about 15 percent to roughly 60 percent.23
The Worldwide Online Population
According to the Computer Industry Almanac, the total number of worldwide Internet users passed one billion in 2005 and is estimated to reach two billion by 2011. In spite of the slowdown in the growth rate of new American Internet users, there is no global plateau yet in sight. Since the number of worldwide Internet users was 420 million in 2000, this means that the number of users has been doubling and is expected to continue doubling roughly every five years in the first decade of the 21st century.
- Most of the growth in Internet users comes from developing countries; the markets in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia are much closer to being saturated and thus tend to have slower rates of increase.
- The variable ’total Internet users‘ can be regarded as dealing with the ’width‘ of
Internet usage, but it doesn’t give as much information about the extent to which those individuals are using the Internet—the 'depth' of Internet usage. Ranking countries by average monthly hours spent online, per unique user, gives a very different picture. comScore estimated that, excluding traffic from public computers, Israel, Finland, and South Korea rank highest, with 57.5, 49.3, and 47.2 hours, respectively. Interestingly, the US, the UK, and Japan were not in the list of top 15.
- Morgan Stanley estimated Internet penetration rates for 15 countries and found that developed countries (the US, Australia, and countries in Europe and East Asia) had penetration rates of around 40 to 70 percent, while five of the 15 countries with the most Internet users in 2004 had Internet penetration rates less than 20 percent: China (7 percent), India (4 percent), Russia (16 percent), Brazil (10 percent), and Mexico (12 percent). These five countries are likely to see their penetration rates increase faster than those of the developed world.
- The G8 countries, where about 15 percent of the world’s population resides, have almost 50 percent of the world’s total Internet users.
- The 50 countries in Africa have a total number of Internet users less than that of France, 35 which have about 25 million Internet users.
- There are about 30 countries in the world with an Internet penetration rate of less than 1 percent.
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