The number of people with Internet access is not growing at the pace that was previously expected. The UN has calculated that more than 50% of the world's population is still offline, reports Reuters.

Access to the network in developed countries is available to 90% people, and residents of the 48 poorest countries in the world have virtually no access to the Internet. The rate of growth in the number of Internet users is expected to slow down to 8,1% . It should be noted that in 2014 this figure was 8,6% .

The UN report also says that the world has reached a transition point on this issue. The Commission on Digital Development, which was created in 2010 by the International Telecommunication Union, said that 4 billion Internet users by 2020 seemed an incredible number. In addition, the number of Facebook users in the world exceeds the spread of the Internet.

So, 57% (or more than 4 billion) still do not have regular access to the Internet. This is due to the high price of telecommunications infrastructure in rural and remote areas, as well as a sharp decline in the number of mobile phone users.

By the end of this year 3.2 billion. people will have the opportunity to go online regularly in one form or another. In 2014, this figure was 2.9 billion. This 43,4% the entire population of the planet. Goal in 60% until 2020 still looks not very achievable.

The report also says that women in poor countries have fewer opportunities to access the Internet - in developing countries, the number of male users per 25% more than women. In the countries of Tropical Africa, this figure is 50% .

Analytical agency We Are Social and the largest SMM platform Hootsuite have jointly prepared a package of reports on the global digital market Global Digital 2018. According to the data presented in the reports, today more than 4 billion people use the Internet worldwide.

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 in 2017. The highest growth rates are observed in Africa - the number of Internet users on the continent increased by more than 20% compared to the same period last year.

Affordable smartphones and low-cost mobile Internet tariffs have become one of the key factors in the growth of the Internet audience this year. In 2017, more than 200 million people became mobile device owners for the first time, and now two-thirds of the world's 7.6 billion people have a mobile phone.

More than half of the mobile devices in use today are smart, making it increasingly easy for people to access all the possibilities that the Internet has to offer, wherever they are.

Growth is also noted in the audience of social networks. In the past 12 months, the number of people on the most popular social platforms has increased daily by almost 1 million new users. More than 3 billion people interact with social networks every month, and 9 out of 10 go there from mobile devices.

The main findings of the reports are discussed in detail below, but for now, here is a brief overview of the most significant digital metrics in 2018:

• The number of Internet users in 2018 reached 4.021 billion people, up 7% compared to the same period last year.
• The audience of social networks in 2018 totals 3.196 billion people, which is an increase of 13% compared to last year.
• Mobile phones in 2018 are used by 5.135 billion people - 4% more than a year ago.

So, what does all this valuable information say?

1. Billion years

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 from GlobalWebIndex, the average Internet user today spends about 6 hours a day using devices and services that depend on an Internet connection. This is, roughly speaking, a third of the total waking time.

If you multiply this time by 4 billion of all Internet users, you get a staggering figure - in 2018 we will spend 1 billion years online in total.

2. Distribution of the future

As noted in last year's report, Internet access is unevenly distributed in different parts of the world. In 2018, the situation is almost the same, but there are some shifts.

While much of Central Africa and South Asia still have low Internet penetration, these regions are showing the most impressive growth in online audiences.

The number of Internet users in Africa has increased by 20 percent compared to last year's data. In Mali, the number of people with internet access has increased almost 6-fold since January 2017. Online audiences in Benin, Sierra Leone, Niger and Mozambique have doubled in the past year.

It's not just another billion connected.

The spread of the Internet in developing countries will change the way people around the world use the Internet. This is because companies like Google, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent are looking to offer scalable global products that meet the needs of these new users and the environment in which they go online. These changes will definitely have a significant impact on the future of the internet.

3. Communication on the move

More than two-thirds of the people in the world today have a mobile phone, most of them smartphone owners.

Over the year, the number of unique mobile users increased by more than 4 percent, although penetration remains below 50 percent in much of Central Africa.

People around the world prefer to access the Internet from smartphones. They generate more web traffic than all other devices combined.

Moreover, this data only relates to web usage. According to recent data from mobile app market research company App Annie, people today spend 7 times more time on mobile apps than on mobile versions of browsers. This suggests that the share of mobile devices on the Internet is most likely even higher than the above figure.

The latest information from Facebook only confirms this assumption: only 5% of the social network's global audience use the platform exclusively from the desktop.

4. Eleven new users per second

Over the past year, a little less than one million people discovered social media for the first time every day - that's more than 11 new users per second.

Saudi Arabia posted the highest growth rate among the 40 countries surveyed, at 32 percent. India lagged slightly behind the leader, the number of social media users increased by 31 percent in a year here.

Growth was partly facilitated by the fact that people of the older generation began to join social networks. On Facebook alone, the number of users aged 65 and over has increased by almost 20 percent in the last 12 months.

Teenagers (from 13 to 17 years old) among the audience of Facebook also increased, but only by 5% since January 2017.

The gender balance among Internet users is still uneven. Thus, the latest data provided by Facebook suggests that there are still significantly fewer women online in much of Central Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

5. The Philippines hold the lead

True, the Brazilians are already breathing down their necks. The Indonesians and Thais overtook the Argentines for third and fourth in this year's rankings.

6. Facebook still dominates

For Mark Zuckerberg and his team, 2017 has been another great year with impressive growth across all platforms owned by Facebook Inc.

Facebook's main group space continues to dominate social media, growing its user base by 15% in a year. At the beginning of the year, there were almost 2.17 billion profiles on the social network.

Messengers WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger last year grew twice as fast as the main Facebook platform. During the year, the number of users in each of the applications increased by 30 percent.

Although the audiences for these apps are roughly equal, according to recent data from SimilarWeb, WhatsApp has come out ahead in terms of geographic reach. Today, WhatsApp is the top messaging app in 128 countries, while Facebook Messenger leads in 72.

In only 25 countries around the world, the most popular messaging app is not the messenger owned by Facebook.

Despite these impressive statistics, Instagram has managed to surpass all Facebook apps in terms of growth over the past 12 months. The number of users here has increased by a third.

7. Organic Reach Continues to Drop

Organic reach and engagement on Facebook (based on data from 179 countries) have declined over the past year, with average reach rates down more than 10 percent from the previous year. Despite the depressing dynamics, these numbers will be valuable benchmarks for marketers around the world.

8. Increasing the speed of mobile Internet

The speed of data transfer 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 are classified as broadband.

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 global average.

Mobile Internet users in 6 countries, including the Netherlands, Singapore and the UAE, can boast an average connection speed of over 50 Mbps. At the other end of the ranking are 18 countries, including India and Indonesia, where the average data transfer rate in mobile networks does not exceed 10 Mbps.

The good news is that average mobile data speeds have increased by 30 percent over the past year.

This news can please not only the impatient. A faster connection helps reduce stress levels. Studies show that delaying just a few seconds while uploading a video can spike your anxiety levels in the same way as watching a horror movie or solving a complex math problem.

Thanks in part to increased data transfer speeds, the average smartphone owner, regardless of geography, consumes almost 3 GB of data every month, which is 50% more than last year.

9. A sharp increase in spending in online stores

According to the latest figures from Statista, a digital market survey, the total e-commerce market in the consumer goods sector grew by 16% last year. Annual spending reached $1.5 trillion in 2017, with fashion as the largest single category.

Globally, the number of people using e-commerce platforms to buy consumer goods (such as fashion, food, electronics and toys) has grown by 8 percent. Nearly 1.8 billion people around the world shop online today.

Approximately 45 percent of all internet users shop on e-commerce platforms, but e-commerce penetration varies by country.

The check of each buyer in the online trading segment is also growing. Compared to last year, the average revenue per user increased by 7 percent to $833. The British spend the most on online purchases - according to current data, in the UK, more than 2,000 US dollars are spent annually per user.

It is worth emphasizing that these figures are for consumer goods only. If we add spending in other categories such as travel, digital content and mobile apps, the global e-commerce market is likely to be around $2 trillion.

Internet in Russia 2018: key figures

The Russian digital market echoes global trends.

• The most popular mobile app in Russia (both in terms of audience and number of downloads) is WhatsApp, followed by Viber, VK and Sberbank Online. Instagram ranks fifth in the ranking in terms of the number of users and sixth in terms of the number of downloads (here it was ahead of the Yula service from Mail.RU Group).
• 63% of domestic Internet users are looking for goods and services online, but only 46% make purchases. The top spenders are on travel and hotels ($7.903 billion, up 24% from last year), toys and hobbies ($4.175 billion) and fashion and beauty products ($4.783 billion).

Top Internet Trends 2018

In 2018, the digital market will continue to gain momentum, and despite the unprecedented pace of growth this year, we see that access to the opportunities that the global network offers is unevenly distributed. This creates a good foundation for development and suggests that the digital market has definitely not yet reached the ceiling.

However, this development cannot be called linear. There is a transformation of online consumption: Internet users are becoming more mobile, desktops are gradually being replaced by more convenient devices that can be carried around. As a result, purchases are smoothly flowing online, the web is losing ground, yielding part of the traffic to applications, and social networks play a more significant role - this is valuable information for business.

These are the main results of the research conducted by We Are Social and Hootsuite. It is difficult to say for sure what awaits us in a year, but it is obvious that the Internet will become even more firmly integrated into our daily lives, changing the structure and ways of consuming information.

"If we want to understand the information society, we must measure it. Without measurement, we will not be able to track progress or identify gaps that require our attention."

Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union, Brahima Sanou

Internet audience

“We rank first in Europe today in terms of the number of global network users. There are already more than 90 million of them in Russia.” (from the speech of the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin at the International Cybersecurity Congress in Moscow, 07/06/2018)

18 years and older

On September 17, 2018, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) conducted a survey about "Do you use the Internet, and if so, how often?"

The share of Internet users in Russia - 81% of citizens. Including 65% go online daily. Among Russians aged 18 to 24, this figure is 97%.

Also, among the most active audience (using the Internet daily) are highly educated (78%) and financially secure (72%) Muscovites and Petersburgers (76%).

1,600 Russians aged 18 and over took part in the survey. The data are weighted by probability of selection and by socio-demographic parameters. For this sample, the maximum size of the error with a probability of 95% does not exceed 2.5%.

According to the Public Opinion Foundation (December 2017 - February 2018), the total number of users (surfed the Web at least once a month) was 83.8 million people (72%). 74.7 million people (63.8%) use the Internet daily.

Data in million people

• General population - 72


• Central Federal District - 72
• Northwestern Federal District - 77
• Southern and North Caucasian Federal District - 71
• Privolzhsky Federal District - 68
• Ural Federal District - 70
• Siberian Federal District - 72
• Far Eastern Federal District - 75

Data in million people

Data in million people

Winter 2017-2018, percentage data

• General population - 64


• Central Federal District - 64
• Northwestern Federal District - 71
• Southern and North Caucasian Federal District - 63
• Privolzhsky Federal District - 60
• Ural Federal District - 62
• Siberian Federal District - 64
• Far Eastern Federal District - 68

Data in million people

Data source: Leaked data from FOMnibus weekly surveys of Russian citizens aged 18 and over. The surveys were conducted from December 2017 to February 2018, 24,000 respondents.

16 years and older

The Russian branch of the research concern GfK (Gesellschaft fur Konsumforschung) Group, on January 15, 2019, published the report "Internet Penetration in Russia".

The audience of Internet users aged 16 years and older was 90 million people (75.4% of the adult population of the country), which is 3 million more than a year ago.

73 million(61% of the adult population) go online on mobile devices.

Of them, 32 million Russians use the Internet only on mobile devices.

13% of Internet traffic in Russia falls on mobile devices (smartphones generate 10% of traffic, tablets - 3%). This is reported by "The World of Apple in one site" with reference to the data of the analytical company StatCounter.

In October 2016, for the first time in history, global mobile internet traffic outpaced desktop traffic. Tablets and smartphones accounted for 51.3% of global Internet traffic, while desktop PCs and laptops accounted for 48.7%.

How many people are on the Internet?

If you ask the question, how many people constantly log into the network, then the answers can be divided into two parts - a lot and a little.


Some people think that now everyone is on the Internet, while others, on the contrary, believe that these technologies have not yet reached a huge number of people. Both answers are correct, since not everyone has appreciated all the benefits of the global network.

How many people are on the Internet? It is almost impossible to make a calculation, and the statistics are different everywhere.

According to rough estimates, 57% of the world's population still does not use the Internet. If we consider only Russia, then the figure is slightly higher - in our country 66% are already using the network.

Who doesn't use the internet?

According to the data provided by analysts, people over 55 years old, residents of small towns and villages, as well as citizens without education most often do not use the Internet. Modern technologies are alien to them, but in the near future everything should change, as the trend is positive.

It is difficult to collect such information. Figures can vary greatly from country to country.

There are states where the percentage of the population using the global network goes off scale, and there are also countries where 90% of citizens do not access the network. If we take general indicators, then about 4 billion people, although they use the Internet, but not constantly.

One study found that in 2014 people spent time on the Internet 2.9 billion users. In 2015, the figure increased to 3.2 billion.

If you take into account these data, then almost 43.5% of people in the world have already used the Internet. Despite the modernization and all sorts of innovations, in recent years there has been a slight decline in trends.

Simply put, the percentage of new users is declining every year.

Another thing to note is the active growth of mobile traffic. In Russia, there are now more than 12 million users visiting the network from phones and tablets.

The main audience is the younger generation, they used to be classified as wealthy people, but now mobile devices are not so expensive.

It is almost impossible to imagine how many people the Internet is consuming, this is a huge figure. Most often, they visit virtual spaces to receive news, download films and books, communicate on social networks and by e-mail.

Also, one study found that 70% of the population is interested in working and learning online.

How many people use the Internet to make money?

Of the total number of Russian citizens in Russia, only 4% work via the Internet.

The indicator is not serious, but experts are sure that. Whether their forecast will come true or not is still difficult to judge, because every little thing can affect the direction of the trend.

Given the active development of e-commerce and the constant increase in the number of users of the worldwide network, it becomes clear that the Internet is the best place to make money.

Remote work has a lot of advantages, and even a beginner can do it. Take a look and choose the options that suit you.

What will you be paid? Electronic money, for example, to WebMoney wallets ().

From a virtual account, you can repay loans, pay for something, or simply withdraw money to a card. For this, exchange offices have been created, and in order for the withdrawal rate to be profitable, you can use monitoring:

Internet statistics are a necessary thing, without it there is nowhere in analytics. The subject of this article is statistical data on the development of the Internet in Russia and its penetration into the regions according to Yandex. These figures and graphs will help you form a complete picture of how the Internet is developing in Russia at the regional level, which processes have already been completed, which are dying out, and which are gaining momentum. All this data will make it clear how to optimally build a development strategy for your Internet resource and what to focus on when promoting your site.

The most important and indicative metric for the development of the Internet throughout Russia is the level of Internet penetration in the regions by year, from 2007 to 2015. These data are presented in the table.

Table of the dynamics of Internet penetration in the regions according to Yandex

Region	2007	2008	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Central	23	25	38	43	50	55	60	64
Northwestern	31	28	49	53	56	61	64	71
Volga	21	24	36	44	48	55	57	64
Siberian	20	23	35	43	50	56	60	67
Ural	21	24	39	45	54	59	63	66
Southern	20	24	34	43	49	55	60	67
Far Eastern	28	30	37	48	50	49	58	63
District average	23	25	37	44	50	57	62	67
Moscow	57	55	64	68	70	74	77	77
Saint Petersburg	37	52	67	71	71	69	77	77

Captain Evidence is with us: he coquettishly moves his eyebrows and says that Moscow is ahead of all Russia in terms of Internet activity. HE smiles meaningfully and hints that the claims of provincials against Muscovites are a little less than treacherous: a capital businessman starts the issue of creating a website for his company immediately after submitting documents for registering a legal entity. Is there a company without a website in the 21st century - he asks in surprise. Yes, dear Muscovite, it happens, especially here in the Southern Federal District.

Internet penetration dynamics in Russia on average by districts from 2007 to 2015

But the years go by, and we, the Russians, are smart people and know how to study. And now the gap between progressive Moscow and our provinces is slowly blurring. The level of Internet penetration in the most remote corners of our country is increasing, including due to mobile

Internet penetration in Russia by regions for 2015

Let's see how things are with domains in Russia. Let me remind you that the domain is the name of the site, it is on it that the page of the site starts loading in your browser

Number of domains per 1000 Runet users from 2007 to 2013

Region	2007	2008	2010	2011	2012	2013
Central	21	35	44	75	78	53
Northwestern	5	18	34	43	52	43
Southern	8	20	24	29	32	33
Volga	8	22	27	36	46	34
Ural	16	22	37	50	51	35
Siberian	9	22	30	35	40	26
Far Eastern	14	17	35	39	47	35
District average	11	24	33	45	51	77
Moscow	73	133	233	240	201	161
Saint Petersburg	57	57	99	121	125	114

As you can see from the graph, the number of domains per 1000 users has grown almost 7 times in 6 years. However, in some regions, the most active, the number of domains has declined, as can be seen from the table: for example, in 2011 in Moscow there were 240 domains per 1,000 users, but in 2013 their number dropped to 125. Where is the logic, you ask, and you will be wrong, because the logic here is simple and natural.

Once, when links pushed sites to the top like a cork from a bottle of Chateau Tamagne, and the work of an optimizer was super profitable and dust free, energetic people started several sites to promote their company, or to sell all the same links. Search engines have evolved, and lovers of easy money through link SEO were not ready to plow and go to success for years. For this reason, many sites turned out to be unprofitable, they no longer brought easy money, and webmasters stopped supporting the site and paying for the domain.

This is not the only reason why the growth in the number of domains per 1000 users is negative. We can single out the following main reasons why new domains are no longer being bought as actively, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

• more than 70% of Moscow firms already have their own websites
• different sites of the same firm can stick together (affiliates)
• satellites lose their effectiveness
• doorways no longer work
• you won’t earn a lot of money selling links (in the current situation)
• advertising revenues from websites are declining
• some webmasters buy domains on the exchange (dangerous practice)

However, the number of domains in the regions is growing, and this is great, because with every fact of buying a new domain, another leader has stopped hiding his head in the sand, hiding behind the arrogant verdict "We don't need a website." We need it, citizens, because the information age has already arrived, and it is no longer possible to run away from it.

The number of domains per 1000 Runet users on average from 2007 to 2013

Interested in how online business develops? If you rely on the data in the table that I took from Yandex Research, you can see that the share of business sites tends to slowly increase. However, until 2013, in Research, this data was based on the share of business websites that are registered in Yandex.Catalog. Getting into Yandex.Catalog has always been difficult, because only high-quality and useful sites are taken there, this is a kind of indicator of the "coolness" of a web resource.

But we know that most of the sites for companies are made by people who are incredibly far from professional web development. Their plus in the cost of services, but the quality is lame grandiose. After the introduction of the One-Armed Bandit by Yandex, such amateur sites can be found in the TOP50. I confess that before the randomization of the issuance, I could not even imagine the scale of this phenomenon: hundreds of low-quality company sites literally flooded the regional Internet. Luckily, randomization won't help these web resources, they will remain at the bottom of the search results in the long run. Unfortunately, the owners of these HSs are simply losing faith in the possibilities of the Internet, and this is not right.

So, until 2013, such horror sites were not counted in the Yandex Research. The data in the table is provided based on the analysis of quality sites from Yandex.Catalog.

Business related websites, % from 2010 to 2013 in Russia

In a 2014 study, Yandex bases its numbers on a different metric - it counted links to sites in its directory where many companies are registered. Now we know the proportion of organizations that have a website among those listed in the Yandex.Maps Directory as of February 2015. And again we are faced with the same problem: amateur sites and companies that own such sites are often not only not registered in Yandex.Maps (and on the map), but not tied to the region. My opinion is that some business sites are not taken into account due to their complete invisibility for Yandex. On the other hand, there are also a lot of information sites that are assembled on the knee to sell links and advertising, and their share is not opposed to the share of GS that are created as a corporate site. Nevertheless, we cannot find out the true state of things - Yandex counted only those resources that are full-fledged sites in the full sense of the word.

Presence of organizations on the Internet, % 2011 - 2013

But if you are not visible in the search, then you essentially do not exist on the Internet. So there is a certain sound grain in this approach to accounting for business sites. If your site is not counted, we will assume that this is not quite a site. Guys, it's time to make professional quality useful web resources for your favorite company and your clients.

The share of organizations that have a website, among those represented in the Yandex.Maps Directory, February 2015

Mobile internet penetration, %

Based on materials yandex.ru/company/researches/