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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."
182 vs. 186 says nothing if you don't know how many live on each continent.
Personally, I don't think this is a big deal. How many countries make up Europe? How many people are in those countries? And they're comparing all those to just two countries in North America?
Something to bear in mind is that Europe is far less homogenous than the US when it comes to adoption of new tech (and a great many other things as well, I might add). Generally speaking, northern Europe has been on par with the US in internet use since years back, whereas southern Europe is just picking up speed.
This, and the mere fact that the population base of Europe is larger than that of the US means that with time, as the market saturates, Europeans will certainly outnumber Americans (from the US anyway) on the net.
Since Europe is still larger than the Gringo-land by a fair amount, a somewhat smaller per-capita net usage stat will put the total number of users ahead of the US. Its still only in small countries with a concerted effort to push the internet that net usage per-capita tops the US. And that may only be in broadband - I don't remember off the top of my head.
The US, between immigration and a rebounding birth-rate, will outstrip the population of Europe before 2050, if current trends hold. But net usage should be around 99% by then throughout the developed world.
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You probably have a US-based webpage, which would account for the number of hits coming from the US. If that's the instrument I would use to measure net population, I'd have to assume that Internet users are composed of nearly 100% Germans, cause the hits on my German site are nearly all from Germany.
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...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Is this meant to be a joke? Maybe I'm missing the humour, or perhaps it's just incredibly arrogant.
Perhaps we know about NAT as well....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Population on of Europe is > 700M, polulation of North America is arond 300M.
You do the math.
There are a lot of differences between countries in Europe. Ireland sucks when it comes to internet infrastructure (There's barely broadband available) and the phone system sucks (I'm on a multiplexed line, so I get 16.200bps dialup). And there is no such thing as 'uncapped' or 'flat rate'.
Compare that to Norway where flat-rate, uncapped broadband has been widely available quite a few years, with a VDSL test-project the last year. Or Sweden, where "Bredbandsbolaget" (Dunno if I wrote that correctly) can deliver 10mbps-lines to normal people.
A few telecom companies are confused about internet. The Norwegian "Telenor" started building a *good* infrastructure back in the '70s. Ireland OTOH seems to have a hodgepodge of systems that won't quite work, or works slowly.
Like possibly that we are not the only nation on earth! It'd be great to see the internet become more global and make our (US) sites be more european leaning and actually get some points of view from both sides, not just the propaganda we hear now about things, such as Iraq. Our constitution gives us freedom of speech, lets see what good we can do in the world if we actually used it instead of following like sheep!
This is not a suprising fact. The US is not ahead in technology.
You know I really cannot stand when people say nonsense like this. The US is, overall, the richest reasonably large country in the world (note: I am not even an American! I'm a Canadian, and our purchasing power isn't nearly as strong as the mighty American $), so clearly one cannot simply say "Uh, they're behind in technology!" (which is an especially hilarious comment when a large portion of the world's high technology industry is centered in the US): If they want, they can have the best of every technology worldwide: The best, most cutting edge wireless technologies, with handsets that'll clean your teeth while you talk, and compute the next million prime numbers while they slumber. If there is a technology anywhere in the planet, apart from maybe Osama's garagecave, if the US and US citizens found it palatable and worthwhile, they'd have it.
A more reasonable comment would be "the adoption of certain technologies has not been as brisk in the US as it is in some other countries". For instance, the cell phone networks in North America tend to already have a tough time being profitable, so they don't jump on new, non-standardized technologies at the toss of a coin like they appear to do in Japan (where they bleed money on them at unbelievably staggering rates). US citizens, generally, like paying $100 or less (actually, most like the phones to be free) for handsets, because again it really doesn't matter to most of us: I don't want a colour screen on my phone, I just want something that I can talk to people on.
So, theoretically, each of those super-wealthy types could buy higher tech gadgets than the rest, but in terms of consumer electronics, the hyperluxury set really don't set the pace for economies of scale.
You also may have a lower gross income than the typical American, but your discretionary spending money is probably comparable. The rest of your comment largely holds - that it's a matter of spending priorities.
start learning from it's elders how to play nicely with the rest of the world
... see Germany above ... China, I think the Tibetans might have something to say about that. Sure the US has made some bonehead calls in the past and will probably make some more in the future. However, compared with the foreign policy mistakes by our supposedly wiser "elders" we are pretty damn benign.
Sure, we could learn how to treat our neighbors from Englands' illegal occupation of Scotland and Ireland. The English could also teach us how to how to create a geopolitical timebomb from their mismanaged colonial and post-colonial policies. The Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Sub-Continent are problems of their creation. From the French we could also learn colonial misrule. They must know something, they managed to slaughter a million Algerians. Many of the problems in SE Asia and North Africa can be traced back to French idiocy. The one thing we won't want to learn from the French is how to defend ourselves. The Germans? not even going to spend time on it. The Italians, not too bad but it would be nice if they gave the Ethiopians back their national monuments. Greece? No thanks, I like to play computer games. Hmmm... Belgium, wrong again, the current turmoil in Western Africa stems from their colonial rule. Luxembourg? Never been there, hear it is a really nice place. I suppose we could be like them, the only problem is that sometimes, somewhere, someone needs to get their ass handed to them and while I have great respect for the British military, they just don't have the logistical network or the deep pockets to stand in for the long haul. Well so much for Europe, what about Asia? Japan
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt