The company Global Web Index presented a statistical report on the Internet preferences of Europeans in 2014

As you know, the world leader among countries in the implementation of IT infrastructure is the United States. It is in North America now there is the largest number of data centers, many of which are true giants. At the same time, Asia takes in quantities, while showing phenomenal growth rates in the region, both of the computing capacity of the IT infrastructure and the number of network users. What is happening in this context with Europe, sliding to the periphery? The European Digital Landscape Landscape 2014 (European Digital Landscape 2014) statistics report helped to shed some light on this issue. The study covered 40 European countries. Although the research data is fresh, but even during their collection it has already been noted that they undergo changes in the direction of quantitative and qualitative increase, and this trend should be taken into account for the most correct perception of the above research results in one of the most developed regions of the world.

Global view

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The total number of Internet users is probably the most controversial and most dynamically changeable parameter. According to some estimates, there are already about 3 billion users in the world at the moment, but it is difficult to say how much this figure is correct. At the time of the work on the preparation of the report, the Global Web Index specialists stopped at a figure of 2,640,432,161, which is approximately 37% as a percentage. Although it is obvious that absolute figures are growing uncontrollably, the percentages undergo not so significant changes in short periods of time, and the level of trust in them remains rather high.

Internet in Europe

The specificity of the Internet market in Europe is an extremely high percentage of Internet penetration into society. For the seven leading countries, this percentage generally stepped over a phenomenal 90%, which shows us the bar of market saturation, which is quite realistic to achieve. Obviously, the rest of the civilized world will somehow go forward to this level.

At a time when the average level of Internet penetration in the life of the average European citizen was 68%, the highest growth potential in Europe remains for its eastern and central part. Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus showed the lowest result of informatization of society.







The total number of network users in the countries of the continent already in 2014 amounted to more than half a billion. Here it is worth noting the fact that Turkey was not taken into account, although de facto it is still about 45 million users. Although these figures are impressive, they are quantitatively inferior to the Asian region. For comparison, the number of users in China alone has already exceeded 600 million.

Russians and Poles are most online

Every day, on average, Poles spend 4 hours and 50 minutes on the Internet, as many Russians do. If we take only the mobile Internet, then the Italians became the leaders in torturing their smartphone, spending 2 hours 15 minutes daily on the Internet using their mobile devices.

Social networks

When the question of social networks comes, the division of preferences of the inhabitants of the continent of Europe into two camps is very clearly seen.



Facebook dominates unconditionally in Western Europe, with a total of 37 countries in the region, drawing around 232.2 million active users to its networks, which is 19% of all users of this social network all over the world. And this is despite the fact that only 8% of the world's population lives in these European countries.



Eastern Europe is firmly stuck, of course, on VKontakte. The largest number of users in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Only in these three countries, the number of active users amounted to a little over 60 million. Facebook is also among the preferences of residents of the three above-mentioned countries, but the number of active users in them is only at the level of 12.4 million, although it is worth noting the upward trend of this social network in eastern Europe.

As leaders of the entire region in the penetration of the Internet into society, Iceland has also become a leader in the penetration of social homes into the homes of people. networks. Facebook is popular among 70% of the inhabitants of the island nation.



Malta diversified somewhat with its 58% social infiltration. networks in the society of the Scandinavian club, four countries of which are in the top 5 most enslaved by social networks. Apparently there is not much fun in the long polar winters.







But the greatest fans to talk, as expected, were the Italians and Russians. Every day they spend on social networks more than 40% of the total time spent on the Internet.



It may be interesting that the fact that in 66% of cases, access to social networks by residents of Europe is carried out using the mobile Internet, and this number is gradually growing.







In quantitative terms, by countries of the region, the UK became the leader in accessing social networks from mobile devices. The study showed that there are already 30 million such users in the country.

Picture of sub-regions of Europe

Based on the analysis of the study, the Global Web Index staff found it appropriate to divide the European continent into sub-regions, based on similar preferences of behavior in the network and the level of information society. According to the results of this work 7 parts were allocated.







The presented map can be an important element in understanding the level of information development of countries, determining the differences in behavior of Europeans in the network.

findings

Statistics is an integral part of a proper understanding of complex multi-level processes. Europe is a densely populated continent with a rather variegated social landscape that needs to be carefully explored. This report may be of interest not only to sellers of all kinds of Internet services, but also to ordinary users of the network who, on its basis, can compare their preferences with the preferences of people in different countries. Analysis of this report may be important not only for understanding the processes that are going through different countries of the continent. Being one of the most developed regions of the world, Europe can be considered as a pioneer in the development of information technologies, in whose footsteps, with some delay, less developed regions of the world will move.