28 Feb

New Caucasus Internet Stats!

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Hoorah! It is finally time to release the new Caucasus Internet statistics from the Caucasus Barometer. The data is publicly released on March 1.

I have a TON of posts ready to share. I’ll cover activities, regions, gender, means of access, but let’s start with the basics…

As always, I welcome comments and questions.

map_caucasus

As usual, let’s recall that this is merely for adults (certainly there are a lot of teenage users!), but the ownership statistics do reflect households, so it is more inclusive of young people.

Also, as I discussed here, survey data is better than ITU or industry data.

So, let’s get on with it!!

First, let’s look at how many people ever use the Internet. This is not as important as frequent Internet use (because who cares if someone used the Internet once last year, right? That’s not the same as someone that uses it every day.) However, people seem to really care about this.

everuse

As of 2012, over half of Armenians, 43% of Georgians, and over a quarter of Azerbaijanis have ever used the Internet. Armenia made quite the jump this year. Notably, there was no increase in Azerbaijan.

Daily Internet use is a more important category – these are people that are potentially getting a lot out of the Internet.

dailyusertrends

As you can see, a third of Armenians, a quarter of Georgians, and 11% of Azerbaijanis use the Internet daily. Armenia has been making quite large jumps each year since 2009.

I also like to do a combination of weekly and daily users that I call “frequent Internet users” — while a weekly user isn’t reaping the benefits that a daily user could, certainly a weekly user is different from a monthly user! A monthly user is much more like someone that never uses, in my opinion.

frequentusers

43% of Armenians, a third of Georgians, and nearly 20% of Azerbaijanis are online at least weekly. This means that most Internet users are using a lot, which is a bit of a change from the past.

Now, looking at frequency distributions for just 2012.

inetfreq

As I mentioned above, the less-than-weekly users are fairly insignificant this year. But more importantly, the “never” used (which in this illustration I added the “I don’t know what the Internet is”), is still quite high in some countries.

Let’s look more closely at Azerbaijan’s frequency distribution over the past few years.

azfreqtrends

While there has been about a 10% drop in those that never use the Internet between 2009 and 2012 (and the bulk of that drop was between 2011 and 2012) and the percentage of daily users has doubled between 2009 and 2012, this is still fairly slow growth. (I get into some of the reasons for this in this article.)

What about ownership? Let’s look at some trends.

Household Internet connection ownership (this does not include mobile Internet – I’ll deal with that in a forthcoming blog post) grew in all 3 countries this year.

homeinternetown

Nearly half of Armenian homes have an Internet connection with some major growth this year! (I’ll look at regional differences in a forthcoming blog post as well.) A third of Georgian homes have Internet and 17% of Azerbaijani homes have Internet.

Unsurprisingly then, these homes have a personal computer.

pcown

Elsewhere I argue that since 2008 when netbooks became available for a fairly cheap price, access to a computer is greater. Over half of Armenian homes, 40% of Georgian homes, and 21% of Azerbaijani homes have a computer. In all 3 countries, there was a pretty large jump from 2011.

And mobile phone ownership has essentially hit the entire population in all 3 countries now.

mobileown

8 thoughts on “New Caucasus Internet Stats!

  1. What does this sentence mean: “And mobile phone ownership has essentially hit the entire population in all 3 countries now.”

    You also say “Elsewhere I argue that since 2008 when netbooks became available for a fairly cheap price, access to a computer is greater. Over half of Armenian homes, 40% of Georgian homes, and 21% of Azerbaijani homes have a computer. In all 3 countries, there was a pretty large jump from 2011.” Does this mean that netbook ownership is up significantly? If not, then there is no causal relationship between netbook prices and overall computer ownership (or “access to a computer”).

  2. We don’t have data on netbooks specifically, but I’ve speculated elsewhere that the netbook price drop likely contributed to the 2008- increase.

    And now that mobile phones are at 90%+ penetration, all 3 countries have probably plateaued. There are always going to be people who don’t adopt (the poorest of the poor, elderly, disabled, etc.)

  3. Dear Katy
    I would not argue what factors were taken in consideration, as you have used only data that have been already published by CRRC (i guess). i dont know how this data can be reliable, but considerin 8million population, it makes apx. 2.2 millions user, which seems to be reasonable to me at some point, but but some facts that i would like to clarify as you made research.
    1. is it reasonable that only 1% increase occured during 2011-12? it makes 80ths
    2. “ever” used? believe me over 50% sometime in their life used an internet. i would agree that they are not daily, weekly or monthly user of internet.
    3. probably you are aware that over 80% of people use mobile phone. so, i can assure you 50% of them are using youtube, you*orn, and other video webs to watch pornography 🙂 sad but true.
    As a conclusion i would say, i agree that 27% of population would be weekly user of internet. but over 50% ever used the internet at some part of their life 🙂

  4. Pingback: Facebookistan.am, Facebookistan.az, Facebookistan.ge in 2012 | Katy Pearce

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