In 2004 Chinese consumers accounted for 11% of the worldwide revenues of luxury-goods firms, with most of their buying done outside mainland China. Merrill Lynch forecasts that by 2014, they will have overtaken both American and Japanese consumers, becoming the world’s leading luxury shoppers, yielding 24% of global revenues.

This is a summary table from Pew Internet & American Life Project on US online user demographics.

Check out usage patterns by gender, search engine usage by gender, broadband ownership by gender and racial profiles of US Internet users.

Clinton’s 8-year presidency resulted in 32 mln e-mails transferred to the National Archives, Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, Bush administration estimates the number will reach 100 mln after current President of the United States, George W. Bush, leaves office.

As vehicles for finding information, search engines are extremely popular among both men and women. About 90% of men and women who go online use search engines, and about 40% use them on a typical day. Men and women generally use the same kinds of search strategies, using search engines most commonly, but also starting searches on familiar, proprietary websites or following recommended links. Although men and women say equally that they find the information online that they are looking for, men are a lot more confident in themselves as searchers, Pew Internet & American Life Project says.

Men and women both use search engines heavily. 90% of online men and 91% of online women use search engines; 43% of those men and 39% of those women use them on an average day. Men and women are equally satisfied users of search engines, but men are more confident than women as searchers. Among searchers, 88% of men and 86% of women say they find the information they are looking for; 54% of men and 40% of women have self-confidence as searchers. Women feel the glut of online information more than men do. Although both men and women like having a lot of information available in their world, 24% of women feel its overload compared with 19% of men.

Japan had 14.3 mln ADSL subscribers by October 2005, an increase by 564,300 since April 2005, MM Research Institute reports. The total number of subscribers to Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) reached 3.9 mln, an increased by 1.3 mln compared to March 2005. MM Research Institute forecasts the total number of broadband subscribers in Japan to grow to 23.4 mln subscribers by the end of March 2006 and around 33 mln by the end of March 2008. The number of FTTH subscribers will reach 5.4 mln by the end of March 2006.

Nielsen//NetRatings listed Vonage, LowerMyBills.com, and BellSouth as top Web advertisers in November 2005.

Compared with women, online men are more likely to use the internet to: check the weather, get news, get do-it-yourself information, check for sports information, get political information, get financial information, do job-related research, download software, listen to music, rate a product/person/service through an online reputation system, download music files, use a webcam, and take a class.

Compared with men, online women are more likely to use the internet to: send and receive email, get maps and directions, look for health and medical information, use web sites to get support for health or personal problems, and get religious information, Pew Internet & American Life Project says.

Consumer electronics sales climbed 10% during the holiday shopping season in 2005 compared with 2004, helped by aggressive advertising and low prices, according to NPD Group. Holiday shoppers racked up $8.2 bln in electronics purchases during a stretch between Nov 20 and Dec 24 2005.

Visits to YouTube.com shot up 83% in one week and surpassed visits to Google Video Search due to sudden popularity of Lazy Sunday Saturday Night Live skit, HitWise writes.

San Francisco Bay Area, heavy with technical and business management jobs, leads the nation in wages, with workers in the region earning 17% more than the national average, the US Labor Department reported. The mean annual salary of a worker in metropolitan San Francisco, including San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties, was $52,100, compared with $37,440 nationally. The mean annual salaries in San Jose and Oakland metropolitan areas were $57,080 and $46,990 respectively.

More than 2 mln users of the original XBox have subscribed to XBox Live, or about 10% of the customer base. Wall Street Journal also points to Microsoft planning to reach 50% of XBox 360 users for its XBox online service.

The market for online ads will increase 32% to $16.6 bln in 2006, Credit Suisse First Boston predicts.

An average of 60 mln spam e-mails are sent every day in China, according to Chinese security ministry.

Nielsen//NetRatings published the rankings for most popular sites in November 2005. Yahoo!, Microsoft.com, MSN and Google led the Internet rankings in the number of unique visitors, while AOL, Yahoo! and eBay had the “stickiest” sites on the list.

On a typical day, wired men are more likely than wired women to go online: 61% of men and 57% of women go online on a typical day. Men go online more frequently than women. 44% of men go online at least several times a day, compared with 39% of women. Men are more likely than women to have high-speed connections at home. 52% of men and 48% of women have high-speed connections at home. Men and women are equally likely to access the internet from home. 89% of men and 87% of women use the internet at home. Men and women are equally likely to access the internet from work. Among internet users who work full-time or part-time, 65% of men and 66% of women use the internet at work, Pew Internet & American Life Project reports.