As a Brit, I’m proud that I live in a country which is usually at or around the cutting edge of technology. Sure, we buy most of our electronics in, with designed in America, produced in Asia, the usual order of things. But the UK still embraces new technologies much faster than most other countries.

Ofcom has recently published its third International Communications Market Report. This study looks at technology use and the state of the communications market around the world. The territories covered include 12 established economies including the US, the UK, Japan, France, and Germany. As well as emerging economies such as Russia, India, and China.

Most countries in the study are now switching their television broadcasts from analogue to digital. The UK is leading the way, with a higher percentage of digital households in Britain than anywhere else in the world. An impressive 86 percent of UK households have a digital TV. The US only has 70 percent, and France 66 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the US leads Internet viewing figures by quite a margin. People in America watched an average of 26 videos online per person during 2007, while the UK only managed eight. But that is still higher than anywhere else in Europe. The US was bound to lead the way with Hulu and the like only allowing American viewers, while the hugely popular BBC iPlayer is only available to British taxpayers.

The UK also comes second to the US in terms of time spent online, but over half of all UK Internet users have used social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

The one sector the UK is struggling in is mobile phones, where the market has actually slowed. But there is a reason for this: market penetration is now over 100 percent, meaning there are more phones in the country than there are people. It’s left to the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China to lead the way on this score.

Related:

Entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm under Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
Stumble It!