statistics

This page offers a selection of statistics about the adoption and impact of communication technologies.

    devices

fax machines per 1000 population (1995, UNESCO & OECD)

US, Australia, EU 23.2

Eastern Europe 1.2

Latin America 4.2

Eastern Asia 0.5

mobile phones per 1000 population (1996, UNESCO)

US, Australia, EU 91.7

Eastern Europe 3.8

Latin America 15.3

Eastern Asia 8.7

televisions per 1000 population (1996, UNESCO)

US, Australia, EU 524

Eastern Europe 317

Latin America 223

Eastern Asia 248

personal computers per 1000 population (1996, UNESCO)

US, Australia, EU 156.3

Eastern Europe 18.2

Latin America 17.5

Eastern Asia 6.5

     time to reach US audience of 50 million (US Commerce Dept 98)

AM radio - 38 years

Television - 13 years

Web - 4 years

     time to reach 70% of US households (Wall Street Journal 99, US Commerce Dept 2000)

Electricity - 49 years

Telephone - 63 years

Mobile phone - 20 years

AM radio - 15 years

FM radio - 5 years

B&W television - 10 years

Colour television - 20 years

VCR - 10 years

Answering machine - 12 years

Microwave oven - 30 years

Mobile Phone - 13 years

Web - 7 years

     internet stats

The size & shape page of our metrics guide points to various internet statistics, from which we've extracted:

number of registered domains (June 00) - 17.75 million, 100% growth pa

number of hosts (January 00) - 88 million

number of secure servers (May 00) - 74 thousand, 100% growth pa

number of pages (00) - between 880 million and 2.4 billion, depending on the statistical source

Internet traffic supposedly doubles every 100 days

time to register first million domain names - four years. Time to move from 4 to 5 million names - three months

    print content (Lyman & Varian)

new titles published in US in 1996 - 68 thousand

journals published in US in 98 - 12 thousand

    the paperless office? (Kurzweil)

US business consumes 850 billion pages of paper in 1981, 2.5 trillion pages in 1986 and 4 trillion in 1990.

    images

Around the world, more than 2,700 photographs are taken every second, with holiday snaps accounting for 80%