South Africa’s Exploding Internet – Nielsen
by Fred on 19/06/07 at 10:58 pm
1 comment
SouthAfrica.info just posted an article on SA’s internet usage going through the roof. Read the article here.
Some of the highlights:
The number of South African unique browsers has increased from 1.8-million in May 2005 to 3.8-million in May 2007, an increase of 121%.
South Africans’ ability to gain access to affordable internet connectivity has been given a boost in recent times, with the incumbent operator, Telkom offering ADSL and broadband, cellular operators like Vodacom and MTN offering 3G and HSDPA access and other companies like Sentech and iBurst offering wireless broadband.
The second-network operator Neotel is also expected to offer similar services once it is fully operational.
The most developed markets in the northern hemisphere have seen a plateauing of growth over the last year.
In contrast, South Africa has seen phenomenal expansion – growing by around 50% in each of the last two years.
The opportunity for hyper-audience growth in the future lies in targeting African language speakers.
The internet population is split 54% male (2.15-million people), 45% female (1.79-million people).
At 1.42-million people, 25-34 year olds are the most dominant age group – accounting for 36% of the online population – closely followed by 35-49 year olds (1.37 -million: 35%).
English is the most dominant language – being the language spoken primarily at home by around 2.10-million online South Africans (52% of the internet population). Afrikaans follows at 1.11-million (28% of the internet population).
The South African internet population is more concentrated around the 25-49 year olds, unlike other English speaking internet nations.
Our conclusion:
Great news for entrepreneurs! Companies can reach their target market through the internet, initiate and maintain relationships with new market segments, and uplift perception of their entrerprizes. All this also happens to be good for our companies (Live Alchemy and World Wide Creative). As they say in the classics ‘Everyone needs a website!’
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
Maureen
Jul 16th, 2007
Hi
Where can I find the actual “South Africa’s Exploding Internet” report?
Thanks
Maureen