How do Europeans use the Internet?

I attended the rather dissapointing Brands across Borders event which was held at the rather spectacular location of Millbank Tower in Westminster. The picture on the left is the venue – I’ll let you imagine the venue from the top – it is pretty amazing let me tell you 🙂

Anyhow, back to the topic.. Europeans Internet usage online. One of the presentations that day was very interesting. It was given by Laura Chaibi of Yahoo Europe about Mediascope – a study of media consumption across Europe. It is in its 6th consecutive year and this year surveyed 9095 people across 10 European countries.

First some stats on Europe itself:

• 60% of Europeans are online
• 80% of Internet users are using broadband
• 49% (!) of Internet users are using wireless
• Online population: Germany: 43.3m France: 34.4m UK: 32.4m

I thought the types of interaction online within different countries in Europe was very interesting. In Germany, people seem to be more interested in using the Internet as a resource or shopping tool using it less to communicate and interact whereas in France, people seem to be more interesting in communicating (using email, social networking and instant messaging for example) than shopping. The UK on the other hand use the Internet for all sorts of shopping and love social networks. I’d love to get the raw data and play around more with it.

Of course, it shouldnt be forgotten that these numbers are as high level as you can get but it does provide some cultural differentiation between the various countries online or rather the majority’s priorities at least.

You can see the full presentation here.