Ah, industry overviews and surveys.
They are useful in the same way stereotypes are practical to navigate a complex world... They help you to gauge a situation, but take every stereotype and report/survey/overview with a grain of salt, as they can be gross over-generalizations – and whoever creates them can skew the results based on their own bias.
Port80 Software has had it's own fair share of survey “relevance questioning” in the past, so we don’t like to point to surveys and reviews of “trends” too often…
That said, we always pay attention to broadband Internet connection penetration reports, as we make performance tools for Web servers that optimize sending less data, less often, to boost bandwidth and speed. All the surveys out there point to broadband’s growing penetration, but this growth curve has begun to decline slightly…
Who cares, right?
Well, a new survey out of the Yankee Group holds that, while broadband penetration is high, there are some good reasons why folks are staying with dial-up connections – and will continue to do so as the rest of us technophiles yearn for more direct FTL optical connections into our house and office (ah, to be digital). Here is a review of the survey and more data at a friendly marketing site:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003833
Again, who cares? Well, you should if you have a Web site or Web-based application, because you may be an unwitting victim of an Internet stereotype not to be ignored:
Not everyone has broadband (or will get it this year or even by 2009), and it is our job to design complex Web systems to the least common denominator for technology access (speed is good, and you can never have enough bandwidth wiggle room), lest we leave users, and perhaps dollars, on the table.
Of course, I am assuming a great deal here in what “our job” is, and you know what assuming makes out of you and me, but it is hump day, and I like to live on the edge.
Happy Wednesday,
M.F. Port80