Evolution of the Information Society in Spain

Last Thursday, January 10, Telefónica presented its report on the Information Society in Spain. In my view this is one of the most comprehensive reports published in this country, so throughout 2012 I have been working on my classes with the data presented last year and eagerly awaiting this year's report so I can update the data with 2012 data (the 2012 report was created with 2011 data).

On Thursday, it was finally presented and posted online. Here is a summary of the highlights.

• The age group that is growing the most in terms of Internet access is the one that brings together people between 55 and 64 years old., which went from 37.7% to 43.7%. It is not the group with the highest penetration (they are young people aged 16-24, with 96% of them connected to the Internet) but it shows that the digital divide due to age is increasingly smaller.
• Communication between people has also been digitalized: We communicate with more people on social media every day (with an average of 23 people) than in person (16 individuals a day). This gives food for thought… especially to those who are against social media or who consider the Internet to be a tool that isolates individuals.
• Applications are growing exponentially, 140% in 2012. We are downloading 2.7 million apps a day. Clearly the market for mobile apps is growing much faster than the market for desktop software.
• Smartphone penetration, with 63.2% of mobile phone users, is the highest in the EU5, and places Spain as one of the countries with the most advanced mobile phone park in the world.
• The mobile phone is the engine of Internet growth, more than 431% of users connect through these terminals; 210% more than in 2011. This is what the report indicates, but I fear that the reality is moving faster. The report uses data from June and July 2012… and in November Telefónica itself reported that we had already reached 501% of Internet connections through a mobile phone.
• The number of mobile devices with Internet connection has grown by 68% compared to in 2011 at a rate of one million new registrations per month in the last quarter.
• E-commerce is growing very significantly, during the first quarter of 2012, revenues reached 2.452 billion euros, 19.31% more than in the same period last year. Although the figures shown by the INE are not so good... in fact, they are very low (only 14.21% of Spanish companies have sold something directly over the Internet).

 Here is the video with the summary of this report.

You can read the full report here: Telefónica Information Society 2012

I hope you find it useful.