Wednesday, December 13, 2000

Over Half Of UK Adults Access Internet

Today, more than half of the adults in the UK (51%) have access to the Internet, and 15.4 million (or 32%) of them are regular Internet users, according to the latest half-yearly UK Internet User Monitor™ survey from Forrester Research.

For the three-week period between 25 October and 20 November 2000, more than 75,000 Internet users responded to an online poll of over 100 questions, to provide the most comprehensive indicator of the Internet's development in the UK. Forrester weighted its online poll with traditional research using both face-to-face and mail-out surveys of more than 6,000 people to achieve a truly representative sample of the UK population as a whole.

"Significantly, the male gender bias that characterised the UK Net has eroded to the extent that women now account for 46% of all British surfers," commented William Reeve, group director of European Data Products for Forrester Research. "The Web continues to impact British buying behaviour, with 91% of those polled claiming to have investigated some kind of goods and services online. For instance, more than half (59%) of British surfers have visited a travel site, 49% have researched financial products and 33% have looked at job site offerings. But while British Net users are, on the whole, increasingly inclined to make online purchases (48% up from 38% in the second quarter of 2000), women are less likely to buy than men -- of all UK adults, 39% of women have bought online against a comparable 61% of men.

"The UK Internet is no longer a hobby for a sophisticated, wealthy and educated male elite," Reeve continued. "The UK Internet has become a truly mass information, communications and entertainment medium. Internet usage by blue-collar and manual workers remains the fastest growing group online. Of all UK C2Ds, 26% now use the Internet regularly –- up from 15% in May. Further evidence of the shift to the mainstream of Internet use is the gradual upwards trend in mean age of Internet use from 33 in the second quarter of 1998 to 37 in the final quarter of 2000."

Portals remain very popular with UK Internet users -- 91% have visited a portal in the last two weeks. Yahoo! and Freeserve are the UK's two most popular, with 45% and 35% of all UK Internet users respectively visiting them within two weeks of being polled.

"Internet use, originally driven by access at work, is growing amongst home users -- 75% of respondents completed the online survey from home, against 12% at work," Reeve concluded. "Around half of UK adults have a PC in the home and the proportion of users filling in the survey from home rather than work has grown from 50% in the second quarter of 1998 to 75% in the fourth quarter of 2000. Home use is driven by the desire to use email, free ISPs, and increasingly by free or reduced-price call packages. Additionally, as Internet use grows, the proportion of Internet users with the experience, confidence and sophistication to conduct advanced Internet behaviour -- such as engaging in chat, registering at a site and online buying -- increases."

Online polling allows the recruitment of a user sample that is large enough to be statistically robust. Pop-up technology used with the agreement of all sites involved ensures that this sample is random, not self-selecting. Also, the number of high-traffic UK sites -- over 130 including Yahoo!, Freeserve, BBC, Excite, Lycos and FT.com -- ensures that the survey captures a representative proportion of total UK Web traffic during the three weeks.

Intelligent Content Caching Market is Exploding
The intelligent content caching market is exploding. As the number of Internet users sharply increases and ecommerce continues to boom, the demand for caching devices will reach new heights. According to IDC, this market will accelerate at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 98%, from $514 million in 2000 to $4.5 billion in 2004.

"With Web sites becoming increasingly more complex, Internet performance and reliability are critical to ensuring customer satisfaction," said Lucinda Borovick, manager for IDC's Data Center Networks program. "Caching is essential to improving Web response times because it conserves bandwidth and offloads processing from the overburdened Web server."

According to IDC, the opportunity for caching sales will come from Web hosters, service providers, content distribution services, and enterprise segments. Currently, the service provider space, including Web hosters, represents 80% of the caching revenue, with enterprises accounting for the remaining 20%. Despite significant growth in enterprise accounts, these percentages will remain basically unchanged through 2004.

IDC believes while static content represents more than three-quarters of caching revenue today, streaming media will grab two-thirds of it in 2004. "Streaming media will fuel the demand for cache devices to scale the Internet," Borovick said.

News Tidbits (appears every day on front page)
- Soon you may be able to access the Internet from a local gas station. It's already happening in the U.K. According to BBC News, "Motorists are being offered internet access at selected BP petrol stations. Two refitted stations have opened in London and 80 more are planned for elsewhere in the UK next year, with 300 others due to open around the world..."

- Can vulgar domain names be registered? This issue is before a court in Concord, N.H. hearing a case where Network Solutions refused to allow a company to register vulgar names. Federal Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled in favor of Network Solutions, upholding the companies decency policy.