Buzzcity/Gamma Network stats

Think the mobile internet is for high-income early adopters and tech-savvy youth? If you’re talking about Western countries, then you might be right. But if you look at the latest stats from Buzzcity’s my Gamma network, then you can see that mobile internet has gained mass appeal in developing nations and is continuing to grow.

BuzzCity is an ad and publisher network, much like Admob, but with a focus on social network publishers in developing countries. Buzzcity believe that mobile social networking is connecting the unwired in places like Indonesia, India and South Africa as well as among blue collar workers in developed markets like the US and UK.

The latest stats from Buzzcity show strong growth globally. They delivered close to 3.9 billion advertising banners with Indonesian growth continuing to dominate in terms of overall traffic. A closer look at their Q2 stats shows growth in almost every territory, including some of Europe, but it is clearly developing nations where they are seeing substantial traffic gains.

There are two real tangible facilitators for this growth. Firstly, these countries don’t have the fixed-line infrastructure or home PC penetration, so while PC web use is constrained, mobile surfing is accessible to all. Secondly, although most subscribers are on ‘pay as you go’, data charges are relatively low, so mobile surfing is also affordable. However, feeding this boom must be a real demand for mobile internet services, especially social networking.

It is this last point which is particularly interesting because I think it says something about the societies themselves, as well as the nature of mobile. Mobile is allowing peer to peer communication that would otherwise not exist, and in many cases communication that might be frowned upon in societies that are still fairly conservative (I am thinking India here in particular). Mobile is not just taking the place of the PC, it is dispensing with it althogether – people are effectively leap-frogging the PC web and going straight into mobile communities and communication. Mobile is therefore emerging as the principal means of accessing the internet in these territories. Its not convergence, but the emergence of a new channel in its own right.

We are so PC web focussed in the West that its hard to imagine the internet without a computer. But for social networking and many other non-business applications (content snacking and informal communications) a phone makes more sense. It is likely that developing countries are actually showing us the future, a future where, for most people, mobile internet is the internet and the ‘old fashioned’ PC is relagated to the study, the office or the attic!

THE BUZZCITY TOP TEN

1. Indonesia : 1.21 billion (85%)
2. India : 669 million (16%)
3. South Africa : 578 million (36%)
4. USA : 190 million (45%)
5. Kenya : 156 million (99%)
6. Tanzania : 88 million (53%)
7. Bangladesh : 78 million (47%)
8. Romania : 71 million (26%)
9. Brunei : 63 million (80%)
10. Philippines : 55 million (86%)

Find the full report here.