Trusted by more than 23,000 companies
Container freight rates oscillated dramatically between January 2023 and October 2024. Freight rates slumped to their lowest level on the 26th of October 2023, when the going rate for a 40-foot container was only 1,342 U.S. dollars. Since then, the global freight rate has significantly increased, hitting over 5,900 U.S. dollars in July 2024, the highest value on record. As of October 10th 2024, freight rates decreased to 3,349 U.S. dollars per 40ft container.
How did we get here?The global supply chain is a fragile system consisting of numerous links. Disruption to one can send cascading effects down a chain that needs to function properly for the whole system to work. The COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be an event of such a magnitude to either bring to halt whole industries and supply chains, or severely reduce their efficiency. Due to its complexity and transcontinental nature, container shipping was hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, the shipping industry has had to struggle with port closures and congestions, labor shortages, difficulties with capacity utilization, as well as a lack of new shipping containers. In more recent months, the impact of the conflict in the Middle-East between Israel and numerous Islamic nations has had a significant effect on oil exports in the region, further exacerbating an industry in desperate need of recovery.
While costs of operating a container fleet have increased, the surge in freight rates has not served just to cover rising expenses. Container ship operators had been reporting record-high operating profit margins since the beginning of the pandemic. However, despite these high profit margins, the freight rate increase has had some repercussions. In the second quarter of 2023, main container shipping companies had an average profit margin of 8.9 percent, a decrease of almost 50 percent compared to the peak EBIT in the first quarter of 2022. Despite this decrease, some of the carriers are combating this trend by using their previous profits to increase their carrying capacity by buying new containers and ordering new container ships. However, the delivery of these newly ordered ships is still years away.
As of October 2024, "Inside Out 2" (2024) was the highest-grossing animated feature film ever released, grossing 1.69 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. It dethroned "Frozen 2," which is now holding the second position with more than 1.45 billion U.S. dollars since its theatrical release in 2019.
Ripple - or XRP - prices surged in 2021, but went down significantly as 2022 progressed. As of October 19, 2024, one XRP token was worth 0.54 U.S. dollars. Ethereum's price, for example, kept on reaching new all-time highs, a feat not performed by XRP. Indeed, XRP's more price spikes followed relatively late - only occurring in early 2021, against late 2020 for most other cryptos - after the US SEC filed a legal complaint against Ripple in November 2020. This legal action caused the XRP price to plummet from around 0.70 U.S. dollars to 0.20 U.S. dollars.
Ripple versus XRP: two become oneTechnically speaking, Ripple is not a cryptocurrency. Renamed from a protocol called OpenCoin in 2013, Ripple facilitates open-source payments. XRP, on the other hand, is the cryptocurrency that runs on this network. In that sense, Ripple and XRP have a similar symbiosis to each other like the Ethereum network and its cryptocurrency Ether. Unlike Ethereum - whose price changes are connected to the world of Decentralized Finance or DeFI - Ripple/XRP mostly looks at developments on cross-border payments for companies. In 2020, companies worldwide began to favor fintech solutions for future B2B solutions and, in a way, Ripple is an extension of that.
What affects the price of Ripple?Ripple is mostly active in Southeast Asia - a region with a splintered payment landscape and that heavily investigates its own types of state-issued cryptocurrency to make cross-border payments a lot easier. Price spikes tend to follow after news on this topic in this specific region. In 2019, for example, the XRP price grew after Japan and South Korea began testing to reduce time and costs for transferring international funds between the two countries. In March 2021, Ripple announced that it had agreed to acquire 40 percent of Malaysian cross-border payments firm Tranglo to meet growing demand in Southeast Asia.
In August 2023, the IKEA mobile shopping app was downloaded almost two million times from both the Google Play and Apple App Store globally. The peak of 2024 happened in March, with the Swedish ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture retailer recording more than 1.9 million app downloads worldwide.
Maia Sandu, the incumbent president from the Party of Action and Solidarity, received the largest share of votes in the presidential election in Moldova in the first round held on October 20, 2024. Known for her pro-EU stance, she received roughly 41 percent of the votes after 96 percent of the votes were counted. As the figure was below 50 percent, a second round will take place. Her main opponent, Alexandr Stoianoglo from the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, received almost 27 percent of the votes.
Netflix reported 84.8 million paid streaming subscribers across the United States and Canada in the third quarter of 2024. After a decline in the U.S. and Canadian subscriber base during the first nine months of 2022, this marked a growth of over seven million compared with the same quarter of the previous year.
The EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) region is Netflix's top-performing market in terms of subscribers, surpassing North America in the third quarter of 2022 for the first time. The company reported losing an estimated one million users worldwide in the second quarter of 2022, with the number of Netflix users standing at approximately 221 million that quarter. But why have audiences canceled their subscriptions? One reason for the unprecedented drop in account holders is Netflix's monthly fee, which has been increasing rapidly over the past few years. On top of that, viewers have also voiced criticism over Netflix's cancellation of popular shows and its lack of big movie franchises.
Netflix's vast content library offers anything from reality TV to Hollywood blockbusters, with shows and movies delivered in many different languages. As of early 2024, European countries such as Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Iceland boasted the largest content catalogs on Netflix. In the U.S., where audiences could choose from approximately 6,400 titles, "NCIS" and "Suits" ranked among the most popular streaming series on Netflix in 2023. As of that year, fan favorites "Stranger Things" and "One Piece" were the most expensive Netflix original series, with production costs of 30 and 18 million U.S. dollars per episode, respectively.
During the 2024 regular season, the average attendance at Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) games rose to 9,807. This not only marked a continued recovery from the dip in attendance experienced during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, but was the second highest average attendance since the WNBA's inaugural season in 1997. Similarly, average TV viewership of the WNBA has also grown, and at an even quicker rate than live attendance, having reached around 505 thousand per game in 2023, which was over double the figures from 2016 to 2021.
During the first three quarters of 2024, average disposable income in China increased price-adjusted by 4.9 percent compared to the previous year. For the whole year of 2023, the real increase in disposable income was 6.1 percent.
In 2024, South Korea's capital Seoul had a restaurant price index score of 37.4, the highest among megacities in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan's capital Tokyo followed with an index score of 35.4. In contrast, Kolkata in India had a restaurant price index score of 14.6 that year.
The price of emissions allowances (EUA) traded on the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) reached a record high of 100.34 euros per metric ton of CO₂ in February 2023. Average annual EUA prices have increased significantly since the 2018 reform of the EU-ETS.
The EU-ETS became the world’s first carbon market in 2005. The scheme was introduced as a way of limiting GHG emissions from polluting installations by putting a price on carbon, thus incentivizing entities to reduce their emissions. A fixed number of emissions allowances are put on the market each year, which can be traded between companies. The number of available allowances is reduced each year. The EU-ETS is now in its fourth phase (2021 to 2030).
EU carbon prices are volatile and change daily. Prices are determined by the supply and demand of allowances. In March 2022, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war caused EUA prices to crash to less than 60 euros/tCO₂ due to the expected ban on Russian energy imports in Europe.
Discover data on your market
Gain access to valuable and comparable market data for over 190+ countries, territories, and regions with our Market Insights. Get deep insights into important figures, e.g., revenue metrics, key performance indicators, and much more.
Discover our market insights* For commercial use only
The Consumer Insights helps marketers, planners and product managers to understand consumer behavior and their interaction with brands. Explore consumption and media usage on a global basis.
With an increasing number of Statista-cited media articles, Statista has established itself as a reliable partner for the largest media companies of the world.
Our reliabilityOver 500 researchers and specialists gather and double-check every statistic we publish. Experts provide country and industry-based forecasts.
Our teamWith our solutions you find data that matters within minutes – ready to go in your favorite format.
Our accounts
Mon - Fri, 9am - 6pm (EST)
Mon - Fri, 9am - 5pm (SGT)
Mon - Fri, 10:00am - 6:00pm (JST)
Mon - Fri, 9:30am - 5pm (GMT)
Mon - Fri, 9am - 6pm (EST)
1 All prices do not include sales tax. The account requires an annual contract and will renew after one year to the regular list price.
