Feature
Remember when you had to look in a book to find information? Or write a letter to communicate with a friend on the opposite side of the world?
Yea, well — that was today for millions of people worldwide.
In our increasingly digital, hyper-connected, always on realities, it's easy to forget that Internet access is not a basic human right — and digital experience is just a dream in many parts of the world.
Using data from the Internet Live Stats, SoftwareInsider visualized the percentage of Internet users by country, or Internet penetration, as of 2014.Listen Up, Digital Marketers
So what does this mean for digital marketers? For starters, it means translation services are not necessarily the first thing to consider when you decide to take your digital experiences global. It all comes down to where in the world you're trying to reach customers.
Internet use is most common in Western Europe, North America and Oceania. It's also fairly high in Canada, Norway and the Netherlands, as well as in select small countries such as Bermuda (97.75 percent), Qatar (96.65 percent) and Bahrain (96.53 percent).
Internet penetration isn't especially high throughout East Asia, with the notable exceptions of Japan and South Korea.
In terms of the sheer number of users — as opposed to a percentage of the population — China beats the United States. China take first with more than 641 million Internet users, while the US comes in second with 279 million. Internet users have grown 4 percent in China from the previous year and 7 percent in the United States.
So which countries should you scratch from your digital marketing plan? Here's a cheat sheet, courtesy of SoftwareInsider.
Congo
Population: 4,558,594
Internet penetration: 1.92 percent
1-year user growth: 0.16 percent
Guinea
Population: 12,043,898
Internet penetration: 1.7 percent
1-year user growth: 0.16 percent
Ethiopia
Population: 96,506,031
Internet penetration: 1.7 percent
1-year user growth: 0.16 percent
Niger
Population: 18,534,802
Internet penetration: 1.61 percent
1-year user growth: 0.17 percent
Somalia
Population: 10,805,651
Internet penetration: 1.51 percent
1-year user growth: 0.12 percent
Sierra Leone
Population: 6,205,382
Internet penetration: 1.49 percent
1-year user growth: 0.12 percent
Burundi
Population: 10,482,752
Internet penetration: 1.39 percent
1-year user growth: 0.17 percent
Myanmar
Population: 53,718,958
Internet penetration: 1.16 percent
1-year user growth: 0.09 percent
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Timor-Leste
Population: 1,152,439
Internet penetration: 1 percent
1-year user growth: 0.1 percent
Eritrea
Population: 6,527,689
Internet penetration: 0.91 percent
1-year user growth: 0.01 percent
