INTERNET GROWTH OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS


Who would have predicted that a social networking site called Facebook would pick up 600m users in 7 years?   Who would have imagined that mobile phones would become such a core part of our daily lives in both  rich and poor countries.?

To try and make some sense of the statistics here are a few simple graphs based on information from a variety of sources that in general corroborate each other.

GLOBAL POPULATION:  This is projected to grow from the current 6.8bn to about 7.2bn during the next five years.   The majority of growth to take place in EMERGING markets.



MOBILE PHONE PENETRATION:  The huge growth experienced over the last 15 years is set to continue,  in EMERGING markets in particular ( while in mature markets where penetration is over 100%  - older generation phones are being replaced by Smart-phones).    Current mobile phone users number in the order of 4.9bn people  ( or 72% penetration of the global population ) and in five years from now there will be OVER 6.6bn users (or about a 91% penetration of the forecast global population).



INTERNET PENETRATION:   This is set to increase from the current 2bn users (both PC’s  and mobile)  to about 4.3bn internet users in about five years.   So the growth in Internet penetration will be dramatic.  Driven mainly by a rapid growth in MOBILE penetration and the ongoing rollout  of broadband into residential markets globally.  Mobile access to the Internet will increase from the current 840m to about 2.5bn users over the next five years.  This includes both Smart-phones as well as tablet devices.   In EMERGING markets where penetration is lowest we can expect the quickest take up.   I anticipate that Africa will experience an INTERNET revolution over the next ten years in the same way that it experienced a MOBILE revolution over the last fifteen years.



Finally  - THE INTERNET OF THINGS 
The number of devices are that are connected to the Internet is expected to pass 5 billion this year according to IMS research (this includes digital picture frames, cameras and e-book readers) and predictions are that by 2020 the number of connected ‘things’ will surpass 22 billion.    So these devices will become an integral part of the Internet and will communicate with each other as well as with humans to varying degrees.  The INTERNET will connect 'things' in a woven fabric encircling the earth.     Check out this video from IBM .






Enjoy.

Comments

  1. Carlos Thomas7 March 2011 at 04:53

    Great snapshot deepicting the growth of the Internet. It will be interesting to see how tier 1 carriers cope with the demand for bandwidth from these markets.

    www.carlthom.as

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown8 April 2011 at 03:15

    What source did you get these statistics from Ross?

    ReplyDelete

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