Latin America

There were an estimated 204,689,836 internet users in South America (representing about 34.5% of the region population), according to statistics updated June 2010 by Internet World Stats. This represents an increase of 1,032.8% compared to 2000. 

South America top 10 countries:
1. Brazil: 67,510,400 (34.0% of the population in the country)
2. Argentina: 20,000,000 (48.9%)
3. Colombia: 19,792,718 (45.3%)
4. Chile: 8,369,036 (50.4%)
5. Peru: 7,636,400 (25.8%)
6. Venezuela: 7,552,570 (28.2%)
7. Ecuador: 1,759,472 (12.1%)
8. Uruguay: 1,340,000 (38.3%)
9. Bolivia: 1,000,000 (10.2%)
10. Paraguay: 894,200 (12.8%)
(Internet World Stats, November 2009)

The number of internet users in Latin America and Puerto Rico is growing quickly, because of affordable computers, more broadband availability and interest in applications such as social networking. Those are the main findings of a study conducted by Pyramid Research for Google and cited in The Miami Herald.

Pyramid projected the regional residential base of internet users would reach 160 million in five years, up from 100 million in 2009.

Although e-mail and Web surfing are popular with Latin American Web users, as they are in other regions, social networking is especially prevalent.  In Brazil, for example, about 80% of internet users visit social networking sites to chat with friends, meet new people, exchange music and videos and post photos.

A separate study conducted in September 2008 by comScore World Metrix confirmed the Pyramid/Google findings. More than eight out of 10 internet users surveyed in Latin America said they used online social networks.

Leading social networks in Latin America include MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and Sonico, according to comScore. (eMarketer, January 2009)

Growth in the online travel market in Latin America is leading to intense competition, according to PhoCusWright.

Travel distribution in Latin America is still primarily an offline process. However, critical mass is building for consumers and travel companies to connect online. Regional players were the first to make the move online, but this is about to change rapidly as global online travel companies enter the Latin American market.

PhoCusWright indicates that competition is heating up. In the last six months:
- Expedia has expanded in Latin America with an aggressive presence in Mexico
- Booking.com and Hotels.com opened Latin America operations based in Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Travelocity named a new director for the region operating out of Argentina
- Egencia launched the Egencia Global Alliance to expand its network of strategic partnerships including Argentina and Uruguay.

Regional players are also stepping it up. LAN Airlines has launched a new online booking engine, LAN for Business, designed to allow small and medium businesses to purchase and reserve airline tickets. The biggest online travel agency in Brazil, submarinoviagens.com, launched its site focused on corporate travel, Submarino Corporate Travel.

Internet sales are projected to grow significantly as new purchasers increasingly come online for the first time. The travel industry will begin to accommodate Latin America's emerging middle class tourists and business travelers. Credit card security is no longer the major issue but still a challenge, and continued improvement will foster significant growth.

The largest online travel markets in Latin America are Argentina, Brazil and Mexico followed by Colombia and Venezuela. Regional players accounted for exceptional performance and sales increases during 2009 despite the economic slowdown and specific country crises. Latin America's large number of internet users and high adoption of social networks are factors contributing to the online growth. (PhoCusWright FYI, March 2010)

In Latin America, in terms of broadband connectivity Argentina still has a way to go before catching Brazil and Mexico, the region's other economic powerhouses. Brazil had over three times as many high-speed subscriptions as Argentina in Q3 2008, and Mexico had almost twice as many, according to Point Topic.

Broadband subscriptions in the Americas, Q3 2008:
- US: 78,746,000
- Canada: 9,213,000
- Brazil: 9,101,000
- Mexico: 5,702,000
- Argentina: 2,830,000
- Other: 5,949,000
- Total: 111,541,000
(eMarketer, March 2009)

Almost every Latin American mobile operator launched 3G services in 2008, as the region's carriers scrambled to push data services in order to offset falling voice revenues and satisfy consumers' growing hunger for value added products, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

There were more than 6.8 million active WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) connections across Latin America at the end of March 2009, an increase of 50% in just one quarter. Possibly the most striking growth of all has been in Brazil, where there were 3.8 million WCDMA subscriptions at the end of March 2009, up from 2.2 million three months earlier.

The analyst predicts that there will be more than 15 million WCDMA subscriptions in Latin America at the end of 2009, or less than 3% of the total 522 million mobile subscriptions in the region. However, WCDMA subscriptions are forecast to grow to 320 million at the end of 2014, or 46% of the region's 689 million predicted total mobile subscriptions at that time. (telecoms.com, June 2009)