Statista

On December 2, 2008, Google released the first version of the Google Chrome browser for Windows XP - four years later, it was already the most widely used web browser in the world. Today, with a market share of around 65.4 percent, Chrome is far ahead of all other browsers. Alongside the search engine and the YouTube video portal, Chrome is probably one of the US company's biggest success stories. Previously, the majority of internet users surfed the web with Internet Explorer. But that was quite a while ago. According to StatCounter, the heyday of Internet Explorer was history with the rise of Chrome. Germany was generally regarded as a Firefox stronghold. Accordingly, it took until the fall of 2017 for Chrome to overtake Firefox, the market leader at the time. Today, however, Chrome is clearly the most widely used browser in Germany too.

With the Summer Olympics having drawn to a close on 11 August, the next major multi-discipline international sporting event is due to get started this week - the Paris 2024 Paralympics. Meaning the 'parallel olympics', the Games are a meeting of the world's top athletes that have a range of disabilities and have taken place since 1960. As data from the International Paralympic Committee shows, similar to the Olympic Games, the United States has been the dominant force in the Paralympics with a total of 2,283 medals, which is the highest number of overall victories. Great Britain is currently in second place with 1,913 medals. When combining Germany’s gold, silver and bronze medals for the former East Germany and West Germany with today’s Germany (i.e. post-reunification), then the country rounds off the podium with 1,550 awards. The opening ceremony will take place on 28 August while the first competitions will start the following day, including medals being awarded in the swimming, taekwondo and cycling.

The CEO of the Telegram Messenger app, Pavel Durov, was arrested at an airport north of Paris on Saturday. According to prosecutors, the Russian-born tech leader is being held as part of an ongoing cybercrime investigation over the company’s alleged failure to combat the use of the platform for illicit activities. Telegram has denied wrongdoing. The arrest has raised debate on several fronts, including criticism from whistleblower Edward Snowden who has called it an “assault on the basic human rights of speech and association.” Although French President Emmanuel Macron has said it was not a “political decision”, experts on Russia speculate that Durov’s arrest could have far-reaching consequences, including potential disruptions to Russian military communications. Telegram is a popular means of communication in many parts of the world. Survey data from Statista’s Consumer Insights shows that 45 percent of online respondents in India said they regularly used it in a poll conducted between July 2023 and June 2024. In Brazil, nearly four in ten online respondents said the same, while around a third of respondents reported using the platform in Mexico, South Africa and Spain. In several northern European countries Telegram was less popular, with France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden and Poland all reporting usage at 10-13 percent. Statista did not poll respondents in Russia, but according to independent Russian pollster the Levada Center, around 51 percent of Russian citizens reported using the platform as of March 2024.

Monster Energy is a leading brand in the energy drink industry, recognized for its aggressive marketing and distinctive branding. With its iconic claw-shaped "M" logo and bold green and black color scheme, Monster has built a strong identity associated with extreme sports, gaming, and alternative lifestyles. Since its launch in 2002 by Monster Beverage Corporation, the brand has expanded globally, sponsoring major events and athletes in motocross, skateboarding, and esports.   The data is provided by Statista Consumer Insights and a different brand is selected and highlighted each time. For more consumer insights click here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eXidY9h8

The global gender gap index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, political, education, and health-based criteria. In 2023, the country offering most gender equal conditions was Iceland with a score of 0.91. Overall, the Nordic countries make up four of the five most gender equal countries in the world. The Nordic countries are known for their high levels of gender equality, including high female employment rates and and evenly divided parental leave.   Afghanistan is found on the other end of the scale, ranked as the least gender equal country in the world. Conditions for girls and women decreased significantly after the Taliban regained power in the South Asian country in 2021. Since then, the government has restricted access to education for all women above 12 years, and women have been banned to work for international aid organizations in the country, which is struggling with poverty and undernourishment.   Looking at the different world regions, the Middle East and North Africa has the largest gender gap as of 2023, just ahead of South Asia. Moreover, it is estimated that it will take another 152 years before the gender gap in the Middle East and North Africa is closed. On the other hand, Europe has the lowest gender gap in the world.

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The U.S. economy added 818,000 fewer jobs between March 2023 and March 2024 than originally estimated. That’s according to preliminary estimates of the annual benchmark revision to U.S. employment figures. Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics benchmarks its employment estimate for the month of March against comprehensive employment data derived from state unemployment insurance tax records that nearly all employers are required to file. While this revision is typically small, averaging 0.1 percent of total nonfarm employment over the past 10 years, this year’s revision was more significant than that. The preliminary downward revision of -818,000 jobs is equivalent to -0.5 percent of total employment, the largest downward adjustment since 2009. So what does this mean for the broader economy? It mostly means that the U.S. labor market wasn’t quite as overheated as initially thought. Firstly, it’s important to note that these aren’t jobs that are suddenly lost leaving people unemployed, but jobs that were simply overcounted. Perhaps more importantly though, it needs to be noted that job growth was still solid during the revised period. Even after the downward revision, the U.S. added 2.08 million jobs in the 12 months ending March 2024, down from the original estimate of 2.90 million. That brings the average monthly job growth during this period from 242,000 to 174,000, which is still very solid. As our chart shows, four industries accounted for more than 90 percent of the downward revision: professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, retail trade and manufacturing. But while the leisure and hospitality sector still added nearly 300,000 jobs between March 2023 and 2024, the other three industries saw employment decline according to the revised estimates.

On August 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international public health emergency in response to a surge in cases of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, particularly on the African continent. The cause is a new strain, Clade Ib, which is feared to be highly transmissible. It is a different variant from the one that caused the 2022 epidemic in many previously non-endemic countries (Clade IIb, still present in several parts of the world). While one case of infection (Clade Ib) was reported in Sweden last week, and the WHO has indicated that it expects more cases on European soil in the coming weeks, the epidemic is currently mainly concentrated in Africa. As detailed in the following infographic, based on data from the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the Democratic Republic of Congo currently has the highest number of suspected or confirmed cases on the continent: almost 18,000 cases were recorded there between January 1 and August 16, and 535 people lost their lives over the same period. Four clades of the virus have now been identified in Africa (Clade Ia, Clade Ib, Clade IIa, Clade IIb).

On August 19, dock worker unions in India, representing 20,000 members, called for a nationwide strike starting August 28. Their demands include pay scale revisions, arrears payments, and protection of existing benefits. If the strike proceeds, India's economy could be heavily affected. India heavily depends on seaports for trade, handling 19.7 million TEUs in 2022, ranking in the global top 10. However, China leads with 269 million TEUs. China's dominance stems from exporting electronics and consumer goods, such as $858 billion worth of ICT goods in 2021, far surpassing Hong Kong's $410 billion. Asia dominates container throughput, with only the U.S., UAE, and Spain ranking in the top 11 outside Asia.

China's real estate market is under pressure. The number of apartments completed by Chinese real estate developers has been hovering around the six-million mark for five years. Meanwhile, the industry's profits have collapsed, having fallen by 50 percent between 2018 and 2022. This is according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Observers are talking about a collapse in China's real estate industry, which would affect the country's economic strength. At the end of January, the crisis reached a milestone when parts of the loss-making and highly indebted developer Evergrande - once a symbol of China's lucrative real estate boom - went to liquidation. The process is ongoing and, as CNN reports, the company's main development arm in Mainland China, Hengda Real Estate Group, will not be affected as it is an independent legal entity. The successful petition to liquidate was filed by overseas creditors in Hong Kong, where the company lists stock. This means that the future of the embattled company in China and the effect of its issues on the country's economy are still unclear. China reported an economic growth of 5.2 percent in 2023. Experts, however, doubt the figure as are many opportunities for whitewashing in an autocratic system like China's. It can therefore not be ruled out that the official data on profits and completed apartments shown in the graphs do not represent an accurate reflection of economic development and that the situation is even more dire.