Western Europe leading the way in registrations

User Analysis, Virtual Research

Western Europe leading the way in registrations. Pre-2007, North America was the dominant region for Second Life registrations. This was not surprising due to:

  • The brands in SL at the time
  • Server availability
  • LL being based in San Francisco
  • Media awareness

Today though, it is a different story, with Western Europe now being the dominant region with a 44.6% market share of total registrations. K Zero is currently conducting research to explain why exactly Western Europe has overtaken North America. The graph below shows the regional split as at April 2007.

Of course, a single snapshot in time needs to be put into context to explore the trend analysis. This is shown in the next graph below.

As observed, on a proportional basis, Western Europe has been the dominant region over the time period, comfortably holding a ten point gap above North America. Of note though is the slight dip (proportionately) from March to April, driven by a marginal uplift from North America and also the start on an increase from other regions such as South America (driven by Brazil), the Far East (driven by Hong Kong, Singapore and China in part) and Australasia.

Let’s drill-down into Western Europe.

As referenced above, K Zero is in the process of producing a case study to research the reasons behind the dominance of Western Europe. The answers to this research relate to:

  • Economic factors
  • Presence of brands
  • And therefore media awareness
  • Cultural attitudes
  • IT policies inside corporate organisations
  • Broadband penetration
  • And others

As shown, Germany accounts for over 24% of SL registrations. Reasons: high broadband penetration and also the presence of BMW and Mercedes Benz. Second place currently goes to France with 18% and third place is held by the UK and Ireland with almost 16% of Western Europe share.