disponible también en español
disponibile anche in italiano
The internet in Latin
America
and in Spanish-speaking areas
(hostcount)
One of a series of analyses
by
Giancarlo Livraghi gandalf.it
Updated September 18, 2011
Based on statistics
up to June 2011
The next update will probably be here
in
the second quarter of 2012
This analysis had been developed, for several years,
as
a study of “large language communities”.
It is still updated,
as such, in Italian
(numbers, charts and graphs
are clear in any language.)
This is a shorter report that covers a specific
subject:
Latin America (and the Spanish-speaking community.)
In 2004 there was one contry with over twenty million internet hosts: the United States. Now there are six with 25 million or more. But they are nine if we consider as “nations” the Spanish-speaking community and the Chinese ethnic environment – and since 2009 also Portuguese.
The Spanish-speaking area includes 500 million people (nine tenths of which are in the American continent.) They don’t speak “identical” languages but they understand each other and share culture and knowledge. This is, after English, the second largest language community in the “western” world.
With 53 million internet hosts, the Spanish-speaking “nation” is the third largest by hostcount, after the United States and Japan. (If we include Portuguese, the total is 79 million hosts, second only to the US.)
This graph summarizes the growth of internet activity in the Spanish and Portuguese areas in twelve years.
Internet hosts – 1999-2010
millions of hosts
The gray line is an index of worldwide percentage growth
In recent years there has been fast growth of the internet in Spanish-speaking areas and especially in some Latin American countries. The situation is summarized in this chart, from two points of view: Latin America (including Brazil) and Spanish language (including Spain.)
There are 21 countries in those areas with over a thousand internet hosts.
No. of hosts
June 2011Per 1000
inhabit.Brazil 22,212,190 116.0 Mexico 14,476,988 131.2 Argentina 8,628,736 215.0 Colombia 3,343,134 74.3 Chile 1,778,327 105.1 Uruguay 782,426 233.9 Venezuela 685,570 23.8 Dominican Rep. 346,698 35.5 Guatemala 291,625 20.3 Peru 283,988 9.7 Paraguay 214,755 33.8 Nicaragua 178,278 31.0 Bolivia 159,123 15.6 Costa Rica 143,351 32.3 Ecuador 134,184 9.6 Panama * 80,000 24.1 El Salvador 18,890 3.1 Honduras 18,587 2.5 Cuba 3,664 0.3 Latin America 53,700,000 95.8 Spain * 17,000,000 364.8 Andorra 28,114 334.7 Spanish language 53,100,000 128.1 * Hostcount figures for Spain and Panama appear understated at this time
and therefore the number is arbitrarily, but not unreasonably, increased.
The total for Spanish language includes an approximate estimate
of the large “hispanic” communities in the United States.
As in all parts of the world, there are large differences, as is visible in this chart (eight countries with over 300,000 internet hosts, that have 97 percent of the total in Latin America.)
8 countries in Latin America
85 percent of the total is in three countries: Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
If we look at the same situation for the Spanish-speaking area, the picture is different (of course Spain replaces Brazil.)
8 Spanish-speaking countries
The size of the gray “slice”, in addition to other Spanish-speaking countries,
includes an approximate estimate of “hispanic” communities, especially in the US
Let’s see now, as we do in the other data analyses, density in relation to population. The graph includes (in addition to Spain) eighteen countries with over 10,000 internet hosts, that have 99.9 percent of the total in Latin America .
Internet hosts per 1000 inhabitants
in 18 Latin American countries
(and Spain)
The size of Spain is reduced by 30 percent for graph readability.
In 2006, for the first time, density in Latin America became higher than the world average. Since 2008 there are three countries in Latin America (Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico) with over 100 internet hosts per 1000 inhabitants – with the addition of Brazil in 2010 and Chile in 2011. Uruguay exceeded 200 per thousand in 2010 and Argentina in 2011.
This is the density picture in Latin America seen as a map.
For a comparison of “geographic areas”, see international data.
Growth continues, faster than world average. But (as in all other parts of the world) there are large differences. We shall probaby see more changes in coming years.
