5 March 2015 – Global Marketing News
Report reveals internet access worldwide
Facebook has released a report on how internet access differs worldwide.
The 43-page report shows that only 38% of the world’s population goes online more than once a year. The distribution of these internet users is uneven, with three quarters of people from developed countries regularly using the internet, compared to less than 30% of people from developing countries.
The regions with the highest internet penetration are North America, Europe and Central Asia, where well over half the population uses the internet, with South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa having the lowest internet penetration rates.
Poor infrastructure, high costs and a lack of content in users’ native languages were touted as the three most important factors keeping people offline.
Smartphone market slows down in India
The smartphone market in India shrank at the end of last year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Smartphone shipments fell by 4% compared to the previous quarter, while feature phone shipments fell by 14% in the same period.
The trend seems to be due to the saturation of the Indian mobile market, however, rather than an actual decrease in mobile phone popularity, and despite the drop in shipments analysts predict that 2015 will remain a good year for mobiles in India.
IDC India predicts that there will be a surge of smartphone purchases later this year as 4G is rolled out across the country, saying: “Operators are gearing up for the 4G network rollout. End-users’ desire to upgrade and keep abreast with the latest technology will continue to drive strong growth for the smartphone market throughout the course of 2015.”
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Barclays’ Pingit app allows UK users to send and receive money using Twitter names
Individuals and businesses in the UK will soon be able to send and receive money just using their Twitter handles.
Barclays’ Pingit app, which can also be used by non-Barclays customers, currently allows users to send up to £1,500 a day just using their phone numbers. The new initiative, which rolls out on 10th March, will allow users to send money to one another just using their Twitter handles.
Both the payee and the recipient must be on Twitter and have the Pingit app in order for it to work.
Almost 4 million people have downloaded the Pingit app to date and more than £1 billion has been sent using the service.
Brazilian mobile operators stop offering unlimited internet
Mobile operators in Brazil have been given 10 days to explain why they have stopped offering unlimited internet to users.
The mobile operators Claro, TIM, Vivo and Oi used to give users access to the internet, at a reduced speed, after the users’ data bundle had expired.
Recently, however, they have been cutting off access altogether once the data limit has been reached.
The Brazilian consumers association Procon has asked the mobile operators to explain the change in policy, “in order to check whether all the rights and guarantees of the affected consumers are being respected”.
Citiesocial grows to be leading Taiwanese ecommerce site
And finally, Citiesocial, a site that specialises in selling high quality, well-designed products in flash sales, has grown to be one of the leading high-end ecommerce platforms in Taiwan, as reported in Tech in Asia.
The site has trebled its userbase in 2 years and now boasts 90,000 users, with about a quarter of these buying something from the site every 45 days.
Taiwan’s has a healthy ecommerce market, with around 30 billion US dollars being spent online last year.
Citiesocial has expressed an interest in expanding internationally, with developing countries being the most likely target markets, rather than developed countries which already have saturated ecommerce spaces.
Webcertain’s global marketing news bulletins are daily 5-minute videos, providing marketers with the latest international digital marketing news in an easy-to-digest format.
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