Retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe rose by 26.3% in 2020, to €481.54 billion ($539.18 billion). The pandemic is fueling other shifts in the retail landscape, too, such as a greater focus on buying local.

We predict reasonable Snapchat user growth of 6.8% in Western Europe this year, resulting in 76.2 million new users on the platform, or nearly 22% of internet users. However, this growth is up only slightly from our November 2019 prediction of 6.3%.

The coronavirus pandemic boosted social media usage around the world, as many people stayed home for weeks or months. In 2020, there will be nearly 150 million more social network users worldwide than we expected before the pandemic—more than the entire population of Russia. That will lift the total to 3.23 billion, well ahead of our predictions in November 2019 and June 2020. As a result, nearly 81% of internet users worldwide will be social network users.

This report explores our latest forecasts for US voice assistant, smartphone voice assistant, and smart speaker users, and provides additional analysis about trends shaping the market.

Western Europe showed a strong increase in SVOD platform adoption in recent years, a trend that is driven by US players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, as well as newer streaming services and local players entering the market. The streaming wars are about to hit Western Europe, driving exponential growth in both subscription OTT and Netflix adoption.