A fifth of online shoppers buy with smartphones

"Payment processing firm WoldPay released its Global Online Shopping Report, which surveyed 15 countries on their e-commerce behaviours in order to uncover differences between nations. It found that on average 22% of disposable income was spent online internationally.
Furthermore, in general the percentage of income spent was higher in emerging markets. Taking the lead is India, where respondents spend 36% of their disposable income on purchasing products or services online.
In China this figure fell slightly to 31% of income spent on e-commerce, and Brazilians were clocked a as dedicating 27% of their earnings in this fashion.
The survey found the spending amounts in mature markets are the highest in the UK, where people spent a quarter of their disposable income on online goods and services, whereas peoples in Finland spend only 13%. Spain and France allocate 17% and 19% of their income respectively.
The proliferation of smartphones has opened up different channels for shoppers to make their purchase, another factor that is proven to vary across the markets.
The survey found that just under a fifth of all online shoppers globally use their smartphone to make a purchase, with people in China using this method the most, (46%), and France coming in last with this metric at 7%."

Source:  Research by WorldPay, reported by UTalkMarketing, 27th April 2012

Text messaging is declining Y-o-Y in Finland and Hong Kong

"One of the pioneering text-messaging markets of late Nineties showed substantial declines in text-messaging during the key Christmas period. Customers of Finland’s dominant mobile carrier, Sonera, sent 8.5 Million text messages during the Christmas Eve of 2011. This is a surprisingly steep tumble from the 10.9 Million text messages sent during the Christmas Eve of 2010. The more youth-oriented operator called DNA witnessed a decline to 5.6 Million text messages from 5.9 Million text messages. Christmas Eve text messages traditionally form the biggest or second biggest SMS day of the year in many markets (eclipsed by New Year in some regions). A major winter storm hitting Scandinavia triggered YoY SMS growth on Christmas Day, demonstrating how national disasters still drive consumers towards old school text-messaging.
Signs of consumers moving on from text-messaging to social media, email and IP-based messaging systems started cropping up in 2011 in advanced SMS markets like Netherlands and Philippines. What we seem to be witnessing is a situation where those countries where SMS took off first during Nineties are now the first ones to see a steep decline in SMS usage.
In Hong Kong. the Christmas Day text message decline was nearly 14%. It does seem as though the SMS erosion rates in countries that originally pioneered the service are higher than most observers anticipated in early 2011. Possibly because new services such as mobile Facebook and Twitter are now widely adopted in the same markets where SMS took off after 1995."

Source:  Forbes, 29th December 2011

Internet users & usage in Europe, September 2011

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Source:  Press release from comScore, 14th November 2011

3G penetration by market, Q2 2011

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Source:  Data from Informa & WCIS+, taken from Mary Meeker's Internet Trends presentation 2011, KPCB, October 2011

Smartphone penetration in Europe by market

I created this chart with Google's new online mobile data too.  Data comes from Google and Ipsos.

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There are lots of other markets & measures.  Create your own here.
Source:  Google, Ipsos & MMA 2011.  Full info here

Internet Users & time spent by market in Europe, May 2011

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Source:  Press release from comScore Media Metrix, 6th July 2011

Internet users & time spent by market in Europe, March 2011

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Source:  Press release from comScore Media Metrix, 4th May 2011

The UK, Germany and France collectively account for 70% of all eCommerce spending in Europe

"UK consumers also topped the online retail spending tables in 2009 with an average annual spend of £1,102, compared to a European average of £774 on 20 items with an average cost per item of £39. The UK was followed by Denmark (£1,079) and Norway (£979). On average UK consumers purchased the greatest number of items in 2009 (37), whereas the Polish bought the least (10).
At £44, the average cost per item in France was 48% higher than in the UK, which at £30 was the lowest in Europe. Norway had the highest spend per item at £75.
The research also found that:
25% of UK shoppers are now prepared to spend £1,000 or more online in a single transaction
57% of UK consumers made online purchases — almost 20% higher than the European average of 38%
Poland, with a forecast growth rate of 36%, France (31%) and Spain (25%) will experience the fastest growth this year. As the most mature ecommerce market, the UK will grow the least (12.4%) to £42.7bn.
European online sales will grow by 20% to reach £153bn overall in 2010, accounting for 5.5% of overall European retail sales.
The UK, Germany (£29.7bn of sales in 2009) and France (£22bn) account for 70% of total online sales in Europe. The countries with the lowest overall online spend in 2009 were Poland (£2.2bn), Finland (£2.3bn) and Norway (£2.9bn).
The rankings of the ‘big online three’ (UK, Germany and France) have not changed since 2003, although during this period online sales in France have grown by 244%, compared to 171% in the UK and 183% in Germany"
Source: Research from the Centre for Retail Research, commissioned by Kelkoo, and reported by Internet Retailing, 2nd February 2010

Facebook is now the largest social network in 9 of the top 12 European countries

comScore data for February 2009 shows that Facebook is the largest social network in 9 of the top 12 European markets as measured by unique visitors - UK, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark & Finland. In Austria Netlog is larger (but Facebook is only 25,000 visitors behind), in Germany StudiVz (including SchuelerVz) is larger, and in the Netherlands Hyves is lager. Facebook is 2nd in all of these markets apart from Germany, where it is fourth behind StudiVz sites, wer-kennt-wen, and MySpace.
Source: comScore MediaMetrix February 2009 data, analysed by Isobar

In Helsinki 57% of public transport single tickets are paid by mobile

"In Helsinki, Finland 57% of public transport single tickets are paid by mobile. In Croatia over half of all parking is paid by mobile. In South Africa you can have your paycheck paid directly to the mobile phone account linked to your mobile banking account. In Soweto a barbershop has more than half of its customers paying by mobile. 20% of London’s congestion charge is paid by mobile. In Slovenia every vending machine, every McDonald’s restaurant, and every taxicab accepts payment by mobile phone. In Kenya the maximum limit of mobile-to-mobile money payments is set to 1 million U.S. dollars per single transaction. And in South Korea, all credit card companies enable their credit cards to the owners’ mobile phones by default, offering to send an optional old-fashioned plastic credit card to the customer’s home address for free."
Source: Figures quoted by Alan Moore on page 8 of his paper The Glittering Allure of the Mobile Society, November 2008

YouTube was the top search result for 2008 in 11 major countries

YouTube was the top search result in Google for 11 major countries in 2008 - Austria, Finland, France, Hong Kong (OK, not a country), Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, & Taiwan. This is 11, out of a total of 34 countries reported on by Google.
This shows two things - that YouTube is incredibly popular globally, and that people use search for navigational purposes - that is to find specific things that they already know (rather than type in a term like 'video site')
Source: Google Zeitgeist 2008