A new report from Strategy Analytics shows that over 450 million households worldwide currently have a WiFi connection, which is a 5% increase from last year.
The UK is fourth on the list with 72.1% penetration, behind Norway (76.2%), South Korea (76.4%) and the Netherlands (80.4%). In terms of numeric totals, China leads the world with 108 million households, followed by the USA with 72 million and Japan with 30 million.
| Household WiFi penetration ranking |
Penetration |
| 1 Netherlands |
80.4% |
| 2 South Korea |
76.4% |
| 3 Norway |
76.2% |
| 4 United Kingdom |
72.1% |
| 5 Belgium |
69.8% |
| 6 Denmark |
67.8% |
| 7 France |
67.5% |
| 8 Sweden |
65.0% |
| 9 Japan |
63.2% |
| 10 Canada |
61.0% |
| 11 United States of America |
57.8% |
Eric Smith, Analyst of Connected Home Devices at Strategy Research, said “Contrary to common perception, not all consumers have embraced Wi-Fi networks in their homes despite the fact that global connected devices per household stand at 5.5 in 2014 – Wi-Fi router adoption in fixed-line broadband households still has much room to grow globally. As Wi-Fi technologies continue to advance, prices fall, and the technology becomes more familiar to the average consumer, nearly 80 percent of fixed-line broadband households will have established Wi-Fi networks by 2018.”
[Report: Global Broadband and WLAN (Wi-Fi) Networked Households Forecast 2009-2018]