Digital Nonprofit: Digital media is fragmented globally

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Digital media is fragmented globally

In our globalized world, it is strange how fragmented the world of digital media still is. Graham Spencer of MacStories has compiled data showing that many of the services we have become accustomed to, are only available in a handful of countries. Take iTunes music for example: Apple’s music store is by far the largest digital music store out there. Yet, it is only available to 27 percent of the world’s population. All those Chinese lining up to buy iPhones and iPads currently have no chance of purchasing music or movies for their iDevices (unless they get an American iTunes account, which is impossible without violating Apple’s terms of service).

Also interesting is the fact that people from no more than six countries can get TV content from Amazon and co., speaking volumes of the difficulties in licensing content from content creators (e.g. cable companies) who own a distribution channel (cable TV).

This chart provides a nice overview of the international availability of the content offerings of Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.