E-books represented about 1.5% of consumer book sales in 2009 in North America.

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In Britain, the proportion of homes that receive multi-channel television has risen from 31% to 89% in the past 10 years.

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In 2008, America's net imports of oil and gas amounted to $416 billion or 60% of its budget deficit.

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Only around 20% of Americans have been on a cruise.

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In 2008 the median size of a new home in the US shrank for the first time in 13 years.

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Pay-television subscriptions grew by more than 2 million in America in 2009.

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Since 2005, North American box-office receipts have risen by 20%.

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In 2008, 87% of newspaper revenues in America came from advertising. In Japan, the proportion was 35%.

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Spending on DVDs in America fell from $20 billion in 2006 to $16 billion in 2009.

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The top sponsors of the Football World Cup pay on average £75m to be associated with it.

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The previous Football World Cup (in Germany 2006) yielded $1.8 billion in profits.

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If all the worldwide television coverage of the 2006 World Cup was shown on one channel, it would take more than eight years to watch.

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Over 8 million tablet computers are expected to be sold in 2010.

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At the turn of the 20th century, U.S. households spent about 2 percent of their income on transportation. That figure is now around 18 percent and rising.

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BP doled out $10 billion in dividends in 2009.

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Union membership in America has fallen from a third of the work force in 1950 to just over a tenth today.

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The Nike+ system, one of the first personal speedometers, has been used by more than 2.5 million runners since its release in 2006.

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China and India, with over a third of the world's population between them, have less than 10% of its fresh water.

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China and the US account for some 40% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.

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The number of MBAs awarded by American business schools swelled from 21,561 in 1969-70 to 150,211 in 2006-07.

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Sales of music in the form of digital files grew by 9.2% to exceed a quarter of total sales during 2009.

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In 2009, global box office revenues increased by 7.6%, but total revenue for the biggest Hollywood studios fell by 4.3%, due to the collapse of consumer spending on DVDs.

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The U.S. makes more electricity from nuclear power than another other country in the world — although, when ranked by share of overall electricity, with 20 percent coming from nuclear, it is roughly in the middle.

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Organised retail outlets like supermarkets, hypermarkets and department stores account for just 5% of India's $450 billion retail market.

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Russia's foreign-exchange reserves were virtually zero when it began market reform in 1992; now they stand at $420 billion.

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Currently, there are more than 1.7 million ATM machines worldwide.

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Americans spent $6.4 billion on music in 2009, the most in the world. More than 2/5ths of this was spent on digital files.

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The average YouTube user spends 15 minutes a day on the website, compared with 5 hours that the average TV viewer spends in front of the box.

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40 percent of Americans between the ages of 26 and 40 have at least one tattoo.

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Five months after it was launched, users of Blippy - a Twitter-like service that broadcasts what people buy - share $1.5 million in transactions every week.

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