Next To 2019: Internet Major Facts And Trends of 2018
The world wide web has become a source of information and connection for billions of people around the globe. Once invented to serve military needs, now the Internet is available almost for everyone. However, the pace of spread, the speed and the price of the Internet naturally differ. It depends primarily on government regulations, providers policy and the economics of a particular country. We at NODR aim to invent a useful and profitable mechanism for actual and future Internet users. Therefore Internet trends are crucial for us. Let’s have a glance at what is happening in a digital world at the edge of 2018.
The Audience Growth
An average citizen uses the Internet every day as a multi-tasks source: to meet his needs in social networking, job responsibilities, education, online purchases, gaming, calls, and messengers. The global trend of a cable Internet spread growth and a wi-fi speed increase makes Internet access easier worldwide. We connect to Wi-Fi in public places like stations, libraries, plazas, squares and parks, supermarkets, public transport for free or we can use mobile Internet available almost everywhere on Earth thanks to smart packages provided by the majority of mobile operators in a highly competitive way. The affordability of smartphones is also rising and it reflects in their prices’ fall. As a result, the overall Internet audience grows notably. In 2018, more than 200 million people became owners of mobile devices for the first time, and now two-thirds of the 7.6 billion people in the world have a mobile phone. More than half of them are smartphones. Why not stay online 24/7 with all the resources provided?
In 2018 all these facts make us go online more. Could you imagine this was real 10 years ago? Absolutely not.
Also, many other dreams were just sweet dreams.
4 Billion Of Users
Now when 4 billion people are online daily — many of dreams came true. According to a leading analytical agency We Are Social and the largest SMM platform Hootsuite more than half of the world’s population is now online, and about a quarter of a billion of them went online for the first time only last year.
1 Billion Years Online
This year not only the number of Internet users has increased. The time people spend online has also increased over the past 12 months.
According to the latest data received from GlobalWebIndex, in 2018 an average Internet user spends about 6 hours a day using devices and services which work with the Internet connection. This, roughly speaking, is a third of all waking time.
If you multiply this time by 4 billion of all Internet users, you get a stunning figure — in 2018 we spend a total of 1 billion years online! Figure 1 shows an average number of hours spent online daily from country to country:
In addition to real users and their time spent on the Internet, a key indicator of the development of online capabilities is the percentage of Internet penetration and Internet accessibility for people around the globe. Apparently, access to the Internet is unevenly distributed in different parts of the world. For 2018 the situation is shown in Figure 2, comparing Internet users to total population by country:
Even though in most parts of Central Africa and South Asia, Internet penetration is still low, these regions show the most impressive online audience growth rate. The highest growth rates are observed in Africa — the number of Internet users on the continent has increased by more than 20% over the same period last year. In Mali, the number of people with Internet access has grown almost 6 times since 2017. The online audience in Benin, Sierra Leone, Niger and Mozambique has doubled over 2018. See this and more on Figure 3:
More Than A Tool
The spread of the Internet in developing countries will change the way people use the Internet around the world. It happens because companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Alibaba, and Tencent aim to offer scalable global products that meet the needs of new users and the conditions in which they go online. This is a marketing-based and an important two-way process when companies first launch their products in favor of consumers, and then smoothly our preferences, habits, and needs will be changed due to new convenient and straightforward applications and utilities that we will use every day. Hence, it influences the core of our everyday activities and how do we cope with different tasks. So, these changes will definitely have a significant impact on the future of the Internet and even more, on our lives.
Mobile Internet World
No doubts that despite the ubiquity of Wi-Fi hotspots, mobile broadband has grown in popularity fuelled by the rise of remote working and commuting.
TechRadar assumes that tablets, 2-in-1 laptops or even connected portable gaming consoles have made a dedicated mobile broadband subscription a must-have for a lot of families and businesses.
Although free Wi-Fi hotspots may be present almost everywhere where there is heavy footfall, the quality of service combined with security concerns make them a less attractive for some users.
It proves the fact that one of the most suitable condition to stay online is a mobile Internet indeed. More than two-thirds of people around the world today have a mobile phone, most of them own smartphones, stated in Hootsuite report. As people feel less depressed and more confident when they have their smartphones with them, using mobile Internet makes them stay in touch with the rest of the world.
Over the year, the number of unique mobile users has increased by more than 4 percent, although in the predominant part of Central Africa the penetration rate remains below 50 percent. Mobile users vs. Mobile connections are shown in Figure 4:
People all over the world prefer to go online with smartphones. They generate more web traffic than all other devices in total. See the infographic on Figure 5:
Moreover, this data is for web use only. According to the latest report made by AppAnnie, a company, which studies the mobile applications’ market, today people spend 7 times more time in mobile applications than in mobile versions of browsers. This suggests that the share of mobile devices on the Internet is likely even more than the official figure.
Mobile Internet Statistics
Another significant report reveals global digital population rise conforming to Statista.com as shown below on Figure 6:
As reported by Statista, in 2018 a mobile Internet usage has integrated into the daily life of smartphone and tablet users, enabling them to access and share information on the go. The future for mobile Internet usage is promising and scalable due to nearly sevenfold increase in global mobile data traffic forecast between 2016 and 2021. As of 2017 data report, mobile devices accounted for 49.7 percent of web page views worldwide, with mobile-first markets such as Asia and Africa leading the pack. Kenya registered the highest rate of Internet traffic coming from mobile devices; followed by Nigeria, India, Singapore, Ghana, and Indonesia. As leaders of the market, The Americas and Europe have the highest mobile broadband subscription penetration rate, around 78.2 percent, and 76.6 percent respectively, that is 20% up comparing to 2017.
Mobile Internet Prices Range By Countries
While talking about hopes and dreams let’s have a look at the mobile Internet prices range by country stated in 2018 by the Web Foundation. It is worth to note that mobile Internet traffic as a share of total global online traffic turns to be 51.2% this year. It indicates the boom in mobile devices usage as never before.
Social Networks Rush
A crucial indicator of the spread of Internet access in the world, especially in those regions where there was previously a weak or moderate use of the Internet, is an increase in the number of users of social networks. Moreover, it is impossible to assess Internet spread without taking into account people devotion to particular social networks and messengers. The active users of key global social platforms are shown on Figure 7:
During the past year, a little less than one million people daily discovered social networks for the first time — more than 11 new users per second.
The growth of the global social media audience over the past 12 months was 13 percent, with Central Asia and South Asia showing the most impressive growth rates (by 90% and 33%, respectively).
Saudi Arabia has shown the highest growth rates among the 40 countries that have become objects of research — 32 percent. India lagged behind the leader slightly, the number of users of social networks increased here by 31 percent over the year. The chart in Figure 8 reflects this situation worldwide:
Besides social networking, mobile Internet users also more commonly use their device to watch online videos, accounting for 58 percent of digital video plays during the third quarter of 2017. Tencent Video ranks among the highest-grossing worldwide entertainment app titles in the Apple App Store, followed by iQiYi Video and Netflix, pursuant to Statista survey.
Speedy Mobile Possibilities
Not only the increase in the number of mobile Internet users serves as a starting point for forecasts for the development of Internet technologies, but also the speed of the mobile Internet. The chart on Figure 9 shows us the number of broadband mobile connections compared to population:
The speed of data transmission in mobile networks is growing; this trend can be traced on a global scale. Analytical agency GSMA Intelligence reports that more than 60% of mobile connections today fall into the broadband category.
However, there are significant differences in the speed of mobile communication in different countries. In Norway, the average download speed for mobile networks is 60 Mbps — almost three times faster than the average in the world. The numbers speak themselves in Figure 10 below:
Mobile Internet users in 6 countries, including the Netherlands, Singapore, and the UAE, can boast an average connection speed higher than 50 Mbit / s. At the other end of the rating are 18 countries, including India and Indonesia, where the average data transfer rate in mobile networks does not exceed 10 Mbit / s. There is also good news: over the past year, the average mobile data rate has increased by 30%.
Partly due to the increased data transfer rate, an average smartphone owner, regardless of geography, spends almost 3 GB of data each month, which is 50% more compared to last year. Find out more on global mobile data growth in Figure 11:
The Broadband Story
With a mobile in-device Internet, we stay online on the go. However, the leading indicators of Internet trends show primary the static of broadband Internet. The ultimate research made by the Cable lets us see the whole picture of Internet prices, speed, and forecasts for broadband Internet around the globe.
The lowest price indicated as red, top 4 countries with the cheapest Internet connection considered as highlights are shown below:
The Cable report assumes that with global broadband speeds accelerating by 23% on average between 2017 and 2018, similar shifts in pricing were expected, however, did not happen. Although many individual countries have shifted significantly both up and down the global league table, the average price of a broadband deal globally remains stable, decreasing by only 1.64% across the same period.
This makes perfect sense. Despite uncovering numerous examples where the broadband landscape of individual countries has shifted significantly (most often from ADSL to fiber or FTTH) during this period, providers cannot charge what users cannot pay. Typically, providers offer 3 to 6 speed options, and although in many cases these offerings have become faster, pricing has often remained unchanged.
Consistency, however, is not always a good thing. Connectivity continues to be at its most expensive in the developing and island nations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and Central and South America, with the Cook Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Paraguay, Laos, Namibia, Papua New Guinea and Mauritania forming the ten most expensive countries in the world.
Typically, though not exclusively, where broadband is expensive, it is also slow and unreliable. The opposite is also mostly true, although there are exceptions in both cases.
It has to be taken into account that overall there were 29 countries or territories in total excluded from this study. The largest cluster of these appears in Central and West Africa, with the Central African Republic, Western Sahara, Eritrea, Gambia, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, South Sudan, Chad, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia all failing to offer qualifying broadband packages. These territories are also referred to as countries with the lowest Internet penetration and most laborious Internet access for the population.
Broadband Internet Price And Speed Resume 2018
Despite many countries providing faster access year-on-year, and the price of broadband fluctuating — sometimes wildly — from country to country, on average the cost of bandwidth worldwide remains mostly unchanged, falling just 1.64% since the fourth quarter of 2017.
The countries with slow, patchy broadband infrastructure that connects only a fraction of the population also tend to be the most expensive. Likewise, those with exceptional, often full-fiber infrastructure supplying the majority of the population tend to be the cheapest, if not in absolute terms, on a cost-per-megabit basis. On the Cable report web page, you can find an interactive map of countries with prices data comparing 2017 and 2018 in %.
The United States is a point of particular interest in the data. As arguably the world’s most technologically advanced Western nation, its broadband is shockingly expensive compared to much of the world. In fact, it costs seven times as much to get a broadband deal in the United States as it does to get one in Russia, and over 64% more than it does in China.
Monetization And Speed Of The Internet
This can please not only the impatient. A faster connection helps reduce stress. In line with the research made by We Are Social, with a delay of only a few seconds while downloading a video, the level of anxiety can jump in the same way as when watching a horror movie or solving a complex mathematical problem. This stress double with the fact that the number of online entrepreneurs grows dramatically. Thus, nowadays the proper connection means much more than just an entertainment factor, it moneymaker’s tool.
We live in the boom of Internet technology-based projects and startups, and moreover any traditional business today is powered by digital technologies not just to prosper but simple to operate on the marketplace. How did people run enterprises without global network tools in previous times? Can’t imagine these dark times now.
How to make profits online is a good topic for the next article, although it is easy to find dozens of detailed articles about it. At NODR we will make own research on that later, focused on CDN and blockchain ways to get income online.
Summary
According to the data from reliable agencies stated in this overview, in 2019 the digital market will continue to spin up. However, despite unprecedented growth in 2018, we notice that access to the opportunities offered by the world wide web is unevenly distributed. This creates a good foundation for network development and suggests that the digital market has not exactly reached the ceiling.
At the same time, this development cannot be called linear. There is a transformation of online consumption: Internet users are becoming more mobile, more handle devices gradually replace desktops. Easy Internet access spreads worldwide. As a result, purchases flow smoothly into online, the web loses ground, giving up some traffic to applications, and social networks play a more significant role in people everyday life — this is valuable information for businesses.
The usage scale of the mobile Internet grows as well as the connection speed; however prices for both mobile and broadband Internet remain almost the same. The penetration of the Internet goes global with difficulties in central Africa and the islands. At the same time, Africa shows Internet users rate growth in comparing with Europe and the Americas.
We at NODR figure out of this data not only new numbers of global Internet trends, but useful information for our products development following potential and actual Internet users wants and needs. Let’s consider this overview as a base for subsequent research on new ways of online income that we’ll do shortly. Moreover, for now, let’s admit the Internet as a vital part of our everyday life, which is true for no matter what country, or religion, or job, or age we are. Also, such a significant worldwide penetration of the Internet proves its ultimate social role.
