Some Stats
Did you know that more people (97.3 percent) have the Macromedia Flash player installed than, say Adobe Acrobat Reader (88.8 pct.), or Microsoft Windows Media Player (84.8 pct.)? Those factoids surprised me.
And here are stats about the global reach of the Web.
Total number of Web users (IDC)*
610M December 2004
628M March 2005
645M June 2005
663M September* Forecasted number of PCs using the Internet
IDC (International Data Corporation)
Internet Commerce Market Model (October 2005, v10.1)
To put web access in perspective, the world population in 2005 is estimated to be 6.5 Billion. In other words, only ten percent of the world population has access to the Internet.
When you are starving or dieing from AIDS because no treatment is available, access to Google or eBay is the least of your problems.
These stats also point to an unbounded opportunity, because the overwhelming of the world has not had the opportunity to discover the Internet