For Web companies looking to expand abroad, Russia needs to be at the top of their list of markets to enter. Russia has the fastest growing Internet population in Europe, followed by France and Spain. In a comparison of 16 European Internet populations by country, comScore reports that Russia’s Internet audience for the month of June grew 27 percent year over year, compared to 21 percent growth in France and 15 percent growth in Spain. (Is Russia part of Europe? It is for the purposes of this analysis). If you look at the total size of the Internet populations in each country, however, Russia ranks fifth with 17.5 million monthly Internet visitors. But by Internet penetration, Russia ranks last, with only 14 percent of the total population online. So there is still lots of room for growth there.
France also has strong showing, with 21 percent growth, and ranks third after Germany and the UK in total Internet population, with 31.4 million visitors in June and a 61 percent penetration rate of the total population. The Netherlands, which has the highest penetration rate at 82 percent, actually showed a one percent decline to 11.2 million Internet visitors. I guess there is a limit to growth, even on the Internet.
In terms of regional comparison, comScore counts 240 million unique visitors across Europe in June, versus 190 million in the U.S. and 327 million in the entire Asia-Pacific (excluding public computer usage).
Below are tables ranking the countries by size, growth rates, and penetration.
Here is the list of countries listed in order of size, which I find most useful because it shows which are the biggest addressable markets in Europe:
Here is the same list,ranked by growth rates, year-over-year:
And here is the list ranked by penetration of the total population. Just because a country has a high Internet penetration does not mean it is a huge market (for instance Norway has 76 percent penetration, but only 2.8 million total Internet visitors).
I think China’s Internet population will overshot the United States in the years to come.
http://www.KidT...ru.blogspot.com
Well no shit kid guru. where do you get such divine wisdom?
What is interesting about the Russian internet (called Runet), is its focus on its dedication to local technology. For example, Google is having hard times competing with Russia’s based Yandex in search. If you look at map service providers (our area of focus), Google is still the dominating force however, Yandex rolled our their version of maps (currently in beta) which is gaining traction fast.
Cheers,
Andrei
UMapper – http://www.umapper.com
I’d like to know how much the Kremlin is trying to control the content that their citizens can view. Other media are fully controlled — so much so that the average Russian doesn’t have a clue about what Putin is up to and an average of 30 journalists get killed each year.
actually he ate them… do you know it? yes Putin is a horrible cannibal
we have counted here some figures let’s imagine:
30 journalists is equal to 2,5 journalist per day it is around 130-150 kg of them i think(yes, average Russian journalist… little bit slicker then average US citizen)
ok then… assume that 1/5 of their mass is eatable it is 25-30 kg of a pure human meat
well for a three meals… 5-7kg for one man? I don’t think so… hence there are some cannibals more in Kremlin I think
wow! I’ve made an american-typo independent investigation… Will Putin eat me?.. I’ll be proud!
my bad… the result is 30kilo a month… well – that’s ok for a healthy man
about Kremlin who’s “trying to control the content that their citizens can view”:
do you know that much more control of the internet is hanging up by US copyright holders and other authorities? I haven’t any access from here to a hulu to WB to MTV… to any non Youtube site with somewhat acceptable quality And believe me this is much much more disturbing much more censor and even humiliatingly then virtual Putin’s bloody restrictions and this is another reason of a piracy ocean here
Don’t sidle to a business you are not into “…think about the timber in your own eye” as Russian proverb says
yer mixing censorship with business deals (copyrights and so on). i guess hulu is interested in audience growing and they will find the way to show videos to you.
I would be interested in learning the surfing habits of russian internet users.. what interests them online and what are they looking for. This seems like a great market to enter!
According to Comscore India and China has seen a growth of 27% and 14% in 2008. According to another research – Brazil is expected to see a 9% compounded annual growth rate.
But with population of billions isn’t India and China the largest market?
I think the blog post merely sought to show how fast Russia was improving. There’s no doubt that India and China are huge opportunities. By some numbers, the Chinese middle class population is bigger than the entire U.S.
This is missing some pretty major countries that actually are in Europe like Poland or Romania….
Agree with @alexis. The analysis should include other European countries e.g. Ukraine, which enjoys Russia-like internet population growth.
Of those getting online in Russia, I wonder how many are hackers / spammers.
This data is not the full picture… how about Ukraine and Poland for example.
Yeah, and they’re also rising in Georgia…
In Russia we just (some 4 years ago) got broadband and only recently it became more affordable. This winter many broadband companies gave out free connections to their service. The national telephone company started broadband support and about a year ago (or two) they were (and still do) strongly promoting internet connection as part of their service.
I use one of the tv/internet provider’s services and pay 25$/mo for my 1mb/s (unlimited traffic) plus basic channel pack and it’s a normal price.
That might explain such a rise
Damn, that’s just expensive! Here in Romania, I’m paying 15$/mo for 10MB/s bandwidth (unlimited traffic).
I think it is not Moscow region I’m paying $30 per 25mb/s unlim and there is $15/ for 6mb/s offer exists also among others
Looks like Comscore missed 13+ million Internet users in Poland (7th in Europe then?)
So Mark, do you get uncontrolled access to information in Russia? For example, do you know that Putin is killing people who get in the way of his lust for power? Do you know that he’s stolen $30 billion from the Russian people?
I do, but mostly from the western/european channels. The information gets banned on main sources, but is freely distributed through blog scene and internet communities (we’ve got a facebook clone here, which is another story
)
) for several days, while it was unveiling and none said the same thing. Each one where saying their own comfortable version, to keep the viewer at the screen. So, it’s really hard to say, who’s right and who’s wrong “over there” 
But to tell you the truth, i don’t play the political game. As the Osetian conflict arisen, i tried to watch CNN, BBC World and Vesti (the russian news channel) at the same time (switching the channels, of course
I also agree with Akinori about copyright holders of US (i can’t listen to Pandora radio for istance, which saddens me). And mr. Baah-baah-the-black-sheep, because Moscow and St.Petersburg are really far from Russia’s average cities.
Do not confuse Moscow & St. Petersburg with Russia. The main growth is in those 2 regions. The rest of Russia is still where the West was in early 90s as far as the Internet goes.
It is a very tough market to monetise because of their insane bureaucracy and total absence of reliable online payment options. We gave it a try and realised that it’s a waste of time unless you can establish a base there, hire locals and start building your business there hoping things will improve soon.
Putin doesn’t care what we say, just like we don’t care what he says’. He will bring back the cold war and be happy about it. The net will be restricted in Russia as soon as it turns against him.
My tomato garden is also rising in population.
Russia is a corrupt cesspool. I would urge web developers to boycott the Russian market until the learn how to behave and play nice in their neighborhood.
I absolutely agree with Mark. Each country try to defend there own interest and way of view. The truth of the war in Gorgia is still the question. But I can say with responsibility, that internet in Russia is open. Everyone can write almost everything about the government and so on. At my own opinion the russian FSB and other special structures just late to the time when they could make a censore of this source of information. May be know they thinking about some kind of global firewall and censore mechanisme but I hope it’s too late.
ComScore has huge problems in Russia. At first – with bad localization. Second – their module is blocked by most of antiviruses. Third – their module doesn’t work on Windows Vista. So, the numbers of total amount of Internet users in Russia are much bigger. They say, that by the end of the year there will be 40 000 thousands and by the year 2012 – 59 000 thousands.
Sounds like you’ve never travelled further than Virginia beach, most of you.
All you think of the world is you what you see on american TV.
Look out of the box.