We Are Social has released the first tranche of data from its "Digital in 2017" project which shows that more than half the world's population are using the internet.
The project, in association with HootSuite, aggregates data from global sources such as Google's Consumer Barometer, Akamai's State of the Internet report and Ericsson's Mobility Reports.
It identified the following as the global highlights:
- More than half the world now uses a smartphone
- Almost two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone
- More than half of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones
- More than half of all mobile connections around the world are now ‘broadband’
- More than one in five of the world’s population shopped online in the past 30 days
We Are Social was "surprised by how much the rate of change continued to accelerate over the past 12 months". It plans to release topline data from 230 countries (with 30 detailed reports also due out) which might show some regional vagaries in the growth story but, on a global scale, digital is up year-on-year and growing.
The detailed summary identifies Africa and South Asia as regions where internet penetration is the lowest, although seven out of the top ten growth figures come from African countries.
Elsewhere, its findings on device usage patterns shows that mobile continues to take a bigger share of the world's internet traffic.
By country, Nigeria is where mobile accounts for the highest proportion of web traffic - Russia is the lowest. India's number two position validate the efforts that its OTAs have put into their mobile strategies.
Click here to read a detailed summary of the findings released so far.