Digital Europe – the latest figures

In 1996, 66% of the world’s internet audience was based in the US.  By 2012 87% of the world’s internet audience was based outside the US.  Europe is now the world’s second largest internet audience (after Asia Pacific) with 27% of the total, putting on 7% growth in the last year.

In its latest report (Europe Digital Future in Focus) ComScore analyses the latest European statistics and trends.

Key findings

The internet

• There are 408 million internet users in Europe
• Russia accounts for 15% of all of Europe’s internet users
• Italy (17%) and Russia (15%) have the fastest growth
• Once again, the UK leads the way in user engagement with an average of just over 37 hours per user per month

Mobile and tablets

• There are 241 million mobile devices in Europe
• At the end of 2012 all EU5 countries had crossed the 50% smartphone penetration milestone
  • Of the EU5 countries, Germany has the most mobile devices, followed by:
    • UK
    • Italy
    • France
    • Spain
    • Almost one third of UK page views are made via mobiles or tablets
      • The European average is 20%
      • The most popular smartphone activities are:
        • Accessing personal email
        • Weather reports
        • Social networking
        • Instant messaging services
        • Search

Mobile video

The EU5 has seen rapid growth in the last 12 months

• Mobile video has grown 162%
• PC video grew by 5%

Search

• Google sites account for 86% of Europe’s search engine market
• The figures show that users are not simply using search engines – they are searching within sites such as Facebook, eBay and Amazon too

Shopping and banking

• 146 million Europeans visited comparison shopping sites
• The Netherlands lead the way in internet banking – 66% of all internet users accessed online banking sites.  Only 18.8% of those in Switzerland did so

Newspapers

Taking the UK as a case study, the report looks at increased reach for newspapers via video and mobile.

• The Sun has increased its reach by 16.9%
• The Mail Online has increased its reach by 11%

The report also features country scorecards outlining:

• Top 20 internet sites for each country
• Top news/information sites
• Top retail sites
• Top online banking sites

For more information, see the comScore website.

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