According to BITKOM, the market for downloads in Germany grew by another 16% in the first quarter of 2009 on the respective quarter last year. Music, games, videos, audio books and software from the internet have been more popular than ever before. More than 13 million times Germans loaded files from the internet down to their PCs.
These are the findings of the latest survey by the GfK market research institute. Total turnover generated through downloads in 2008 amounted to about 210 million Euros which is a plus by 23% as compared to the previous year. The number of downloads increased by 20% to 48 million.
One reason for this continuing boom is more and more households having fast internet connections based on DSL and other broad band technologies, says BITKOM. Another reason is the growing variety of the kind of downloads offered with prices falling at the same time. The average download price across all product groups in the period between January and March 2008 was 4.44 Euros following 4.74 Euros in the first quarter of 2006.
Men accounted for 65% of all downloads in the first quarter of 2009 and women for 35%. The percentage of purchasers over the age of 40 was 34 % following 30% in the first quarter last year. 