10.6 Million U.S. Households Now Use a VoIP Telephone Service

Cable operators and Vonage are driving continuing growth in the US residential Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone market, according to In-Stat. According to data from the high-tech market research firm's US Residential VoIP Market Tracker service, more than 10.6 million US households now have at least one active VoIP user, up from approximately 9 million households at the end of Q3. The emergence of the cable operators as a dominant market force seems to have slowed the growth of the client-based VoIP market, with only Skype showing gains in this segment during the 4th Quarter.

The firm's service utilizes a combination of end-user research and market analysis to estimate usage and market share among all of the major service providers, network-based providers such as the cable operators, analog-telephone adapter (ATA)-based services providers such as Vonage and SunRocket, and client-based providers such as Skype, on an ongoing basis. Recent research from the service also revealed that:

• More than 61 % of active residential VoIP users reported that they had discontinued or replaced a traditional (non-VoIP) phone service when they got their VoIP service, including a whopping 76 % of those who use only a network/ATA-based service like those offered by the cable companies or Vonage.
  
  
• Skype's dominance of the client-based VoIP market has grown as its major competitors in this segment lost active users during the fourth quarter while it continued to show strong growth.
  
  
• The ability to bypass international tolls continues to be a big driver of client-based VoIP services, with users of client-based VoIP services reporting that 52 % of their VoIP calls are international long distance while network/ATA-based VoIP users report only 6 % of their calls are international long distance.
  
  
• The percentage of residential VoIP users who report that they use their service for business calls either in part or exclusively continues to rise with 51 % reporting that they use the service for both business and personal calls and 4 % reporting they use it exclusively for business calls.
  

Broadband subscribers reached 281.5 million worldwide

Point Topic and eMarketer just released their respective reports estimating the growth of broadband subscribers worldwide. Point Topic pegs this at 281.5 million while eMarketer estimates it at 251.2 million.

U.S. and China has the highest broadband market in the world.

Japan passes 100 million mobile phone subscriber mark

According to eMarketer, Japan just passed the 100 million subscriber mark for mobile phone users. In addition, 70% of the Japanese population or 89 million people are connected to the Internet. Exclusing Internet and PDA users, comScore Networks estimates this at nearly 54 million.

eMarketer believes that the country's progress in the mobile market arena makes it a model to benchmark with for converged media developments.

Global Internet Audience has Grown 10% in January 2007

comScore Networks just announced that 747 million people, age 15+, used the Internet worldwide in January 2007, a 10-percent increase versus January 2006. Among the top 15 countries (ranked by penetration), Internet audiences in India, the Russian Federation and China increased the most in 2006, growing 33, 21 and 20 percent, respectively.

China - 2nd largest Internet population in the world
China now represents the second-largest Internet population in the world, with 86.8 million users, after the U.S., which rose 2 percent year-over-year to 153.4 million users age 15 or older in January 2007.

Internet users outside the U.S. now represents 80% of the world's online population.

Top 15 Countries by Internet Penetration
Unique Visitors Age 15+
January 2007
Total Worldwide – All Locations
Source: comScore World Metrix

Worldwide - 746,934,000

• United States - 153,447,000
• China - 86,757,000
• Japan - 53,670,000
• Germany - 32,192,000
• United Kingdom - 30,072,000
• South Korea- 26,350,000
• France - 24,560,000
• India - 21,107,000
• Canada - 20,392,000
• Italy - 18,106,000
• Brazil - 14,964,000
• Spain - 12,710,000
• Russian Federation - 12,707,000
• Netherlands - 11,077,000
• Mexico - 10,149,000

Note that this excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Canada, Israel, and South Korea Lead the World in Online Engagement
As a measure of engagement, comScore also analyzed the top 10 countries ranked by average hours online per visitor for January 2007. Canada led the list, with the average user spending 39.6 hours (and 41.3 hours/ month among broadband users) online during the month. Rounding out the top 5 were Israel, South Korea, the U.S. and the U.K. – all countries with high broadband penetration. In fact, in each of the top 10 countries, the time spent online by users with a broadband connection was substantially greater than the time spent by users with a narrowband connection. (Source: comScore)