93% of Brazilian internet users use WhatsApp

"Brazilians had complained bitterly on social media about the suspension of WhatsApp, which is a hugely popular app used by many to communicate with family, friends and colleagues both inside of Brazil and abroad.
Ninety-three per cent of the country's internet population use WhatsApp, according to the TechCrunch website, with many young and poor Brazilians taking advantage of its free text message and internet telephone service.
Within hours of the suspension being coming into force, the hashtag #Nessas48HorasEuVou (#Inthese48hoursIwill) began trending on Twitter, with Brazilians joking about all the things they would do during the suspension."
Source:  BBC News, 17th December 2015

Global mobile ad spend nearly doubled to $19.3bn in 2013

"IAB Europe, the U.S. IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence and IHS Technology revealed today their global figures for mobile advertising revenue which soared a massive 92% to €14.6bn ($19.3bn) in 2013 from €7.6bn ($10.1bn) in 2012, confirming the adoption of mobile as an essential element of the marketer’s toolkit.
Mobile display shows the highest growth at 123.4% and mobile search, up 92.1%, flourishes mainly driven by smartphone penetration as affordable data plans fuel location-based search-on-the-go. Messaging, itself up 19.4%, might not be sharing as much robust growth due to migration from operator-owned messaging services (e.g. SMS and MMS) to alternative platforms. Successful messaging innovation, particularly in Asia, reinforces the commonly held industry belief that mobile players need to be ahead of the curve.
Search remains the dominant segment representing 48.9% of the total global mobile advertising revenue in 2013 at €7.1bn ($9.5bn), while display approaches parity with a 41.5% share at €6bn ($8bn), and messaging takes a 9.6% share at €1.4bn ($1.9bn).
The share by region of the global figure of €14.6m ($19.3m) for 2013 is:
• North America: 41.9% (€6,099m / $8,100m)
• Asia-Pacific: 38.9% (€5,666m / $7,525m)
• Europe: 17.3% (€2,519m / $3,346m)
• Middle East & Africa: 1.2% (€170m / $225m)
• Latin America: 0.7% (€109m / $144m)
2013: Global mobile advertising revenue: share by region
Growth year-over-year was strong across the board, led by Latin America, which saw a massive 215% leap over the 2012 figures. North America and Europe also saw major increases
• Latin America – 215%
• North America – 122%
• Europe – 90%
• Asia-Pacific – 69%
• Middle-East and Africa – 45%"
Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 13th August 2014

Americas Digital Landscape

Social, Digital & Mobile in The Americas from We Are Social Singapore

The rise of the sharing economy

Source:  Chart by Mashable & Statista from 2013 data from Nielsen, 3rd June 2014
See Nielsen's blog post here - 28th May 2014  (Why no chart Nielsen..?)
Note - it says 'the rise' but only includes data from 2013

More than half of people in Latin America can access one or more pay TV service

"It’s Pay-TV boom time in Latin America. According to the regional advertising council LAMAC more than half of Latin Americans can currently access one or more Pay-TV platforms. That’s up from 36.3% since 2008 (the actual present-day statistic is 56.3%) – a significant advance that advertisers, the LAMAC stresses, are reportedly remaining a little slow to take advantage of, with over 85% of advertising campaign efforts targeting free channels, and only 10% of investment directed at Pay-TV."
Source:  IP&TV News, 27th September 2013
Note - just because they can doesn't mean that they do

Mobile subscriptions & growth by region Q1 2013

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Source:  Ericsson Mobility Report, June 2013

Facebook user penetration by region

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Source:  Data from Social Bakers, reported by BBC News, 4th October 2012

An average of 117 searches per searcher were made in June 2012

"Evaluating search growth centers around two primary metrics:
Number of Searchers
Total Searches Conducted
From these numbers, we can then derive a variety of consumption metrics such as Searches per Searcher and Searcher Conversion. For this analysis, I used comScore qSearch, which is based on a two million desktop/PC based searcher panel covering more than 170 countries.
In June 2012, 1.47 billion searchers conducted 173 billion searches (with year-over-year increases of 10% and 12%, respectively), making for 117 searches for every searcher on the planet. If you were to add in the number of searches now performed on mobile devices and tablets, the numbers would be even more staggering. Social Media may get most of the news clippings lately, but search activity is still one of the most popular activities on the Internet.
Search is a relatively mature online activity that will not continue to experience double digit growth in new searchers forever, so the ongoing growth opportunity would appear to be in the number of searches each person conducts. But 117 searches per searcher worldwide already seems like a lot, doesn’t it? However, when you break this number down by different regions and countries, you begin to get a better sense of where the search growth will come from in succeeding years.
While Europe and Asia Pac have the highest number of searchers and generate the highest overall volume of search queries, the search utilization by region shows a different story with Latin America taking the gold:
Latin America: 162
Europe: 135
North America: 129
Asia Pacific: 97
Middle East-Africa: 92"

Source:  Press release from comScore, 5th September 2012

Note - Desktop searches only

Mobile Search and the Olympic Games

Google have looked at some stats across the world, combining tablet and mobile to create this chart.

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Source:  Google Mobile blog, 6th August 2012
Note - lots more background at the original link

Mobile ad spend by region and format, 2011

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Source:  Data from the IAB and HIS Screen Digest, reported by ClickZ, 6th June 2012

3G penetration by market Q4 2011

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Source:  Data from Informa & WCIS+, taken from Mary Meeker & Liang Wu's Internet Trends presentation 2012, KPCB, May 2012

120m smartphones were shipped in Q3 2011, up 49% Y-o-Y

"Canalys today released its Q3 2011 country-level smart phone shipment estimates to clients, revealing that HTC has taken the top spot in the US market. At the same time, a particularly strong performance from Samsung saw it become the world’s number one smart phone vendor. Overall, the worldwide market grew substantially: 49% year-on-year to 120.4 million units.
With phenomenal year-on-year and sequential growth of 252% and 60% respectively, Samsung shipped 27.3 million smart phones under its own brand to capture a 23% share, becoming the number one vendor in APAC, Western Europe and Latin America, ahead of Nokia, Apple and RIM respectively. With well-regarded products, such as the Galaxy S II, and significant marketing campaigns, the vendor registered the second highest quarterly shipment total in the market’s history, behind only Nokia’s Q4 2010 performance. In addition, Samsung shipped an estimated 500,000 units worldwide under the Google and T-Mobile brands.
In the United States, the world’s largest smart phone market, HTC shone in Q3 2011, edging out Apple and Samsung to become the leading vendor. HTC shipped 5.7 million smart phones in the US under its own brand, giving it almost a quarter of the market, as well as an estimated 70,000 units under the T-Mobile brand. ‘However you count it, HTC has become a deserved leader in the US smart phone market,’ said Palo Alto-based Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst, Chris Jones. ‘This is an awesome achievement for HTC, which has built a premium brand in a highly competitive market in just a few short years. It now has a strong range of 4G Android products, with devices ranged by each of the major carriers, and offers some of the most compelling and differentiated products found on the platform today.’"

Source:  Press release from Canalys, 31st October 2011

3G penetration by market, Q2 2011

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Source:  Data from Informa & WCIS+, taken from Mary Meeker's Internet Trends presentation 2011, KPCB, October 2011

6% of shopping searches in Brazil come from mobile devices

"Across Latin America, smartphones and mobile broadband subscribers are growing at a high rate and have in turn driven the mobile strategies of wireless operators. Today, Brazil is No. 5 in the world in number of Internet users and is second to China in growth of 3G subscribers year-over-year.
“The mobile Web is exploding in Brazil, helped with the increase of prepaid data, which is cheaper than going to cyber cafes and also more private,” noted Google’s head of mobile advertising for Latam, Peter Fernandez, during the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in São Paulo.
People are changing their lifestyle and how they consume information. Companies, as well as advertising agencies, carriers and applications developers have to understand that and move forward to provide these new customers what they demand.
“Now, 6% of shopping searches in Brazil are coming from mobile. It’s a 700% growth compared to the past year, and eight times faster than desktops,” noted Fernandez."

Source:  RCRWireless, 20th October 2011

5 of the top 10 markets where most time is spent on social networking sites are in Latin America

"Latin Americans are strongly engaged with social networking. Half of the top 10 worldwide markets ranked by time spent on social networking sites are in Latin America, with Argentina leading the region at 10 hours per month in June 2011.
The Latin American social networking audience is nearly equal in its composition of males and females, but females account for a larger share of social networking time spent (53.6 percent) compared to males (46.4 percent). This trend was most significant in Brazil where females accounted for 58.7 percent of all social networking time spent.
People age 15-24 demonstrated the strongest engagement on social networks, accounting for nearly half (48.0 percent) of all time spent in the category. This trend was most significant in Venezuela where visitors age 15-24 accounted for 3 of every 5 social networking minutes (58.2 percent).
Facebook.com strongly led the social networking market in Latin America, reaching more than 91 million visitors. Windows Live Profile ranked #2 with more than 35.5 million visitors in the region. Orkut held the #3 spot with 34.4 million visitors, largely driven by the site’s popularity in Brazil, while Twitter.com ranked #4 with 24.3 million visitors.
Five of the top 10 markets ranked by Facebook.com reach are in Latin America. Facebook reached 90.9 percent of all online users in Chile, ranking as the most penetrated market in Latin America.
In Brazil, Orkut ranked as the most-visited social networking destination, reaching 35.7 million visitors, an increase of 20 percent from June 2010. Facebook.com, which is the second largest social networking site in Brazil, witnessed strong growth increasing 192 percent to 24.5 million visitors.
Venezuela is the only country in Latin America in which Twitter.com rises to second place in the social networking ranking. One in four online users in Venezuela visited Twitter.com in June (26.5 percent reach).
Recently launched Google+ reached 28 million visitors worldwide in the first 33 days of its public existence (June 29, 2011 to July 31, 2011). Brazil ranked as the sixth largest market for the site globally, contributing 793,923 visitors."
Source:  Press release from comScore, 20th September 2011