Hi, Bill from user research here.
We just finished some research in Thailand and Indonesia where we conducted ~40 interviews with desktop browser users (half of whom were Firefox users). We'll be presenting findings from the research next month, but I'd like to share a few observations from the field that give a clear picture of the Internet infrastructure in emerging markets in SE Asia. Indonesia is worth focusing on for the discussion because they have a large population and Firefox has a large market share. The infrastructure there is similar to India which has an even larger population. Some context: First, the connection speeds are really, really slow and stability is poor. Only 3% of the population in Indonesia has wired home connections. Everyone else either connects at wifi hotspots, internet cafes, or using the 3G network. Even these connections are slow. Average connection speed is 3 Mbps compared to 20 in the US. An example to give some context: most people are not able to stream video from YouTube. They install add-ons (such as IDM) to download the videos to watch them later. Second, most users buy their computers from local vendors, not chain stores. The local vendors preinstall software on the computers including Firefox (and Chrome). Many of these versions of Firefox are older. We saw versions 12, 15, 18. Some of these have add-ons preinstalled (such as Yahoo, etc.). Others are configured to prevent updates. There is a high correlation between download speed and being up-to-date with Firefox. We know from metrics data that ~50% of users in Indonesia are using versions other the current version of Firefox. Only the wealthiest of our participants had the most current version of Firefox. Our lower-income participants who were connecting to the Internet had older versions and add-ons that were hijacking search and the user experience in general. The key point is that download size is very important in these markets. Also, it is important for us to think about two related topics: 1) How to get people in these markets to current versions of Firefox? 2) If downloading is not currently the most effective distribution model in emerging markets, how can we think of alternatives or make downloading work? One final point: we have observed that in rural parts of N. America that connection speeds and stability are similar. So, it's not only an emerging vs. emerged markets challenge. Please let me know if you have more specific or follow-up questions. I'd love to share what we learned. Thanks! Bill _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
