Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

When European technology leaders are envisioned, Germany and the U.K. are most likely to come to mind. But a new report suggests that, at least when it comes to E-Commerce, it’s the Parisians and the rest of France that are most comfortable. ComScore reported Monday (Sept. 7) that “26.7 million people in France visited an online retail site in July 2009, an increase of 21 percent (compared with) the previous year, significantly higher than the 5-percent average growth in the retail category across Europe.”

The report is interesting because France is also embracing M-Commerce and particularly the iPhone at an unusually intense rate. (A reader commented on it in a story about M-Commerce.) The problem with any of these stats is that they are percent of increase, which could simply mean that France has been more hesitant to embrace E-Commerce until now. The ComScore study also excluded M-Commerce activity. If France’s M-Commerce activity is indeed picking up, that could be a material exclusion. ComScore offers some rough comparison points between countries, such as “the penetration rate of the online retail category of total online audience,” which it puts at 77 percent for the U.K., 69 percent for Germany and 69 percent for France. But it’s still an interesting report.