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Europe Net Users Now Outnumber US/Canada
palefish writes "From
this article in the
Media Guardian: According to Irish-based industry monitor Nua.com, Europe has almost 186 million users, while Canada and the US register 182 million. The difference may not seem substantial, but Europe is still a growing market. I've always thought of Europe as lagging somewhat behind the States in the internet uptake stakes (probably because some of our telecoms companies are yet to
understand the internet). So, I don't know about you lot, but this statistic came as a bit of a surprise to me."
oh, and BTW the world wide web was invented in Europe..
The number of internet users in Europe may outnumber those in North America, but the total population also outnumbers North America by over 2 to 1. A quick Google, and I came up with 314 million for NA, and 727 million for Europe. Put in this persepective, NA still has over twice as many people online, but also leaves Europe with a lot of room to grow (and hence probably faster uptake in the future).
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
A large part of the reason that Europe was lagging behind (at least from what I saw in Germany over the summer) is that internet is very expensive. Germans however are nuts for cellular phones (which are often cheaper to use than their home phones) and have ways of downloading music to them and burning that on minidisc. I was staying with a family that had an ISP but still gave me money to go to an internet cafe rather than use their service because it was so expensive. I believe the issue is that the government has allowed a monopoly on all existing phone lines and the only companies that can get around it are newer, like cellular providers.
Umm... Let me guess - your site is in English? Yeah, Europeans speak more than one language you know. You have to think of all the sites out there in French, Italian, Polish, Swedish, German, etc.
Your statement is like me saying "My Swedish web site has more than 95% Swedish visitors, therefore us Swedes must make up 95% of all Internet users, woohoo!"
I heard somewhere that one of the reasons Europe is slow on the uptake of Interenet is that we have had Teletext since the early 80's, and therefore 'instant news' was regarded as not that big a deal here. Don't know if that's true, and another reason will certainly be the high telephone costs here in Europe.
-- Cheers!
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Well I don't know if this is true or not, but it sure seems pretty saturated in Scandinavia, where I live. I live in a town with 35K citizens and we have had DSL and Cable broadband available since early 2000. Everywhere I go (except most of the old folks read over 60) I find at least one PC and they are nearly always if not always on the internet. It is also getting into everything now. My homework and stuff from the university (I recently returned there to finish up my CS degree) I can get over FTP, all contact with the teachers and faculty in general is strongly encouraged to run over email. Our enrollment includes an university email address, our enrollment list has not only email but ICQ on it. And this goes for all faculties not just the CS and Engineering ones. There is a lot more (e-learning portal, webmail, information and so on) and they are constantly expanding (currently they are working on getting a complete wireless coverage, while they build the new university down by the sea). The student housings for the entire town offer 100 Mbit internal LAN and a mighty big pipe out (I don't know how big, but it is a leased part of a fiber) with all the student housings organized by the independent student housing organization (the school has no say over what goes on).
:)
So the internet has spread fully around here and again this is just a very small town in Denmark
A person is smart, people are deeply stupid
Here in Italy the vast majority of users connect through free dial-up accounts. I don't know if it is the same in other countries, but free access usually mean plenty of registered but unused accounts. It is probable that any telcom group counts every account, even the unused ones, for marketing purpouse. I don't know the situation in the USA, but I bet that no ISP offers free (as beer) wireless or ADSL access. I suppose that here in Italy ADSL is about 1% or less of total connections, and wireless networking is almost absent.
Signatures are for stupids.
When speaking to Europeans the phrase is you do the maths.
Mathmematics is "plural but singular in construction so"(Websters) in the Queen's English the shortened form is maths.
A yank living over the waters I am but I have to agree with the Queen's English on that because it is just logical.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
EU and Europe is not the same thing you know.
Let me guess, you're american?
The EU makes up a little less than half the population of Europe. Most of the eastern European countries aren't members.
I was only talking about the EU. Not the continent. I don't know the overall figures, but the current EU population is around 500M, IIRC. The US is up around 280M right now. And the birth-rate in the US is back around replacement, while Europe is shrinking (down near 1.6). Add to that much higher immigration in the US, and its not hard to see the US overtaking a smaller Europe. However this does not include Eastern Europe, or the Balkans, except Greece.
The Economist has a better explanation than I do.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
The national unemployment rates of different countries aren't comparable at all. Who is considered as unemployed?
Try the standardised unemployment rates from the OECD.
The unemployment rate in the EU was 7.4. Canada had an unemployment rate of 7.2, the US had one of 4.8 (2000).
Now, compare the social security system of Canada, various EU states and the US and maybe you know why an unemployment rate of 5.6 is considered "terrible".
Hint: People below poverty line: Canada 10.3%, US 17.0%, Source OECD
Imagine, some people consider poverty as a source of social unrest and criminality.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Um, unless you're using geolocation to detect those sites, using things like looking for '.com' and '.net' is highly unreliable. Almost every European company will try to get the .com as well as the local country code domain, and .org/.net as well for that matter...
... and for example even the biggest german ISP (T-Online) or Arcor or many of the MSN-Ips assign IPs which almost all resolve to a .net Adress
Lord "not Gargamel's Cat!" Azrael