A rundown of some of the major facts and figures that 2011 has to offer.
Mobile
Android now has a 52.5pc market share of smartphone users, according to Gartner’s Q3 2011 report.
Android also passed the 10bn app downloads milestone in 2011.
91pc of mobile internet access in 2011 was to access social media applications.
More than 200m YouTube views occurred on mobile devices per day in 2011.
Some 38pc of 500 American students surveyed in 2011 said they could not even go more than 10 minutes without checking their laptop, smartphone, tablet or e-reader.
RIM shipped 37.9m smartphones in 2011 and 850,000 PlayBooks.
Samsung, fresh off winning the 2011 phone of the year from Pocket-Lint and T3 with the Galaxy S2, claim it sold more than 300m phones in 2011.
The iPhone 4S sold more than 4m units within three days of its launch, even more than the original iPhone 4. Some 25m users also upgraded to iOS5 in that time
Money
The top richest people in the tech sector:
1. Carlos Slim Helu – US$74bn
2. Bill Gates – US$56bn
3. Warren Buffet – US$50bn
4. Larry Ellison – US$39.5bn
5. Christy Walton – US$26.5bn
6. Larry Page – US$19.8bn
7. Sergey Brin – US$19.8bn
8. Jeff Bezos – US$18bn
9. Steve Ballmer – US$14.5bn
10. Mark Zuckerberg – US$13.5bn
11. Paul Allen – US$13.5bn
12. Steve Jobs (deceased) – US$8.3bn
13. Eric Schmidt – US$7bn
14. Sean Parker – US$1.6bn
15. Steve Case – US$1.3bn
Facebook posted revenue in Q3 of 2011 of $2.5bn, well short of its projected $4bn.
Nintendo posted a net loss in the first six months of 2011 of 70.3bn Yen (€650m).
Despite never posting a profit, Groupon’s 2011 IPO attracted 35m shares debuting at US$20 per share and holding total market value of nearly US$18bn after the first day of trading.
The US Department of Justice blocked AT&T’s US$39bn takeover of T-Mobile in August of this year.
Carlos Slim Helu and his family were the richest in the tech industry in 2011. The communications mogul is worth an estimated US$74bn, US$18bn more than second placed Bill Gates with US$56bn.
Web
More than 48 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute in 2011, resulting in nearly eight years of content uploaded every day.
In December of this year, YouTube announced it had passed one trillion playbacks for 2011.
Chrome grew in popularity in 2011, with an 13pc increase in market share (14pc to 27pc) over the year, overtaking Firefox as the second most-used browser.
On 28 January, 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol routes connecting Egypt vanished in an attempt to block the nation from publicising political unrest.
The need for IPv6 was addressed in 2011 as the internet moved ever-closer to filling the 4.3bn addresses set by IPv4.
Social
Google+
The top 10 most followed people on Google+ (as of 16 December 2011):
1. Britney Spears – 1,000,104 followers
2. Larry Page – 900,272 followers
3. Snoop Dogg – 844,584 followers
4. Tyra Banks – 713,803 followers
5. Richard Branson – 647,105 followers
6. Paris Hilton – 637,315 followers
7. Mark Zuckerberg – 616,099 followers
8. Jessi June – 611,732 followers
9. Vic Gundotra – 603,216 followers
10. Dane Cook – 596,287 followers
Launched in 2011, Google+ cost US$585m to build and had more than 500 Google employees working on the social network.
Google+ registered 25m users in one month in 2011.
Android is the No 1 brand page on Google+ (on 16 December 2011), with 159,000 followers.
Pop star Britney Spears became the first person to hit 1m followers on Google+ on Friday, 16 December 2011.
For a time, ironically, Mark Zuckerberg was the most followed person on Google+. He is currently 7th most followed person with over 616,000 followers.
In December 2011, Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding made a US$300m strategic investment in Twitter.
In 2011, Twitter users aged 18-34 represented the largest Twitter demographic in the US at 45pc.
Some 177m tweets were sent on 11 March 11 2011. A new one-day record. This is also the day an earthquake and tsunami devastated parts of Japan.
Similarly, the next day, 572,000 new accounts were created (12 March 2011).
140m is the average number of tweets people sent per day in February 2011.
The current Tweets Per Second (TPS) record is 6,939 set four seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
In 2011, 93pc of marketers employ social media for marketing purposes and 84pc of them utilise Twitter.
460,000 is the average number of new accounts per day created in Q1 2011.
Overall in 2011, there were 138,888 tweets per minute on average and nearly 200m per day total.
11pc of the UK online population in 2011 used Twitter.
It now takes roughly five days for 1bn tweets to pass through Twitter.
Top 10 Facebook countries by users:
1. USA – more than 155m
2. Indonesia – more than 40m
3. India – more than 36m
4. Turkey – more than 30m
5. UK – more than 30m
6. Mexico – more than 29m
7. Brazil – more than 27m
8. Philippines – more than 26m
9. France – more than 23m
10. Germany – more than 21m
The average user is connected to 80 pages, groups and events.
The average Facebook user had 130 friends in 2011.
250m photos added per day on average this year, with 2bn posts liked and commented upon per day.
No 1 brand on Facebook in 2011 – Coca-Cola
An amazing 734m comments were posted on average per day on Facebook during 2011.
Entertainment
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hit US$1bn in sales in just 16 days, beating the previous media record of 17 days held by Avatar.
An estimated 77m users’ details and 2.2m credit card details were stolen when Sony’s PlayStation Network was hacked in 2011.
The security breach is also estimated to have cost Sony more than US$170m.
Nintendo 3DS sales topped 13.5m units for the year, 3.5m short of its 16m unit target.
Angry Birds hit the milestone of 500,000,000 downloads of across all platforms in 2011.
In the run-up to Christmas, Amazon announced it had sold more than 1m Kindle devices per week for three consecutive weeks.
In 2011, one in five Facebook users logged on to play FarmVille.
More than 570 movies were released in theatres in 2011, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 the highest grossing of the year.
