- Pulse tracks the concentration of core web technologies and infrastructure according to comapnies and their jurisdictions.
- One technology, SSL Certificates, has seen significant change in market share in the last two years, predominatly due to the Japanese cerficate authority, GlobalSign.
- GlobalSign’s market share of the Top 1,000 most popular websites has meant Japan has overtaken the USA with respect to this metric.
When we started measuring the concentration of various Internet services on Pulse several years ago, we knew we were in for the long haul.
The intention was never to be able to make a few measurements and then point to the results and say, ‘See! This market is too concentrated!’ Instead, we knew that interesting data would only emerge over several years as we saw shifts in the relative concentration of different markets due to mergers, acquisitions, and other changes in the service provider landscape.
One aspect of our measurement methodology is associating a legal jurisdiction (a country) with service providers. This enables us to observe the relative market share of countries in the various Internet service marketplaces that we measure and how these change over time.
We also provide the ability to weigh results by population to shed light on situations where small countries with relatively small populations are punching above their weight regarding market share for a particular service.
In this post, I want to share some insights about the SSL Certificate (or, more appropriately, TLS Certificate) market. SSL certificates are fundamental to the Web Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a system of independent policies, technologies, and processes that secure and authenticate connections between web browsers and web servers.
Gini Coefficient
The Gini coefficient measures the degree of inequality in a distribution and is widely used in economics to measure wealth and income inequality. It ranks income distribution on a scale between 0 and 1, where 1 means complete inequality (one actor owns all the shares) and 0 represents perfect equality (every actor has the same share).
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI)
The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is a commonly accepted measure of market concentration. It is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm competing in a market and then summing the resulting numbers. HHI values range from 0 to 10,000. HHI values over 2,500 indicate highly concentrated markets.
When considering the Top 1,000 websites globally, the Gini coefficient for the SSL Certificate market has been declining fairly steadily for over a year (Figure 1). This indicates a more equitable distribution of market share over time.
If we now consider the HHI for the same market and set of websites, we see less dramatic change between June 2021 and November 2024 (Figure 2). The more-or-less steady state HHI score of 2,500 indicates the SSL Certificate market is fairly concentrated in a few providers. While that has been changing somewhat in favor of a less concentrated market, the shift is not as significant as we observe for the Gini coefficient above.
If we look at the HHI for the SSL Certificate market for all websites in our dataset since June 2021 (Figure 3), we see the converse: an increasing HHI indicates an increasingly concentrated market. In our analysis, we often observe that the providers relevant to all websites have different characteristics from those relevant to the most popular websites. In this regard, the SSL Certificate market is no exception.
Country Market Share
Looking again at the data for all the measured websites, we see that since late 2022, Japan has been gaining market share at the expense of the USA (Figure 4).
This trend is even more pronounced if we look specifically at the Top 1,000 websites globally (Figure 5). Over the period, we can see Japan’s market share growing from around 15% to over 40%. Meanwhile, the market share for the USA has declined from over 90% to around 75%. (Note that total market share can exceed 100% as some websites use multiple service providers.)
Japan’s market share is most pronounced when we weigh the market share by the country’s Internet user population. As Figure 6 shows, Japan overtook the USA in mid-2024.
What’s Behind These Changes?
The answer lies primarily in GlobalSign growth in the SSL Certificate market. According to the magnificent folks over at W3Techs, GlobalSign’s market share has grown from less than 10% at the start of 2024 to over 20%! GlobalSign (headquartered in Brussels, Belgium) is owned by GMO Internet Group, Inc., which is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
Clearly, lots of website owners are now choosing GlobalSign for their SSL Certificate needs.
A final chart, again from W3Techs, helps to shed some more light on how GlobalSign is growing its business. While Let’s Encrypt dominates the provision of SSL Certificates to websites in general (unsurprising given they do not charge a fee for this service), GlobalSign is dominant amongst the more popular websites, which presumably prefer to pay for a service backed up by some service guarantees and associated legal warranties. This helps to explain why we see signals of greater equality in the market but without much change in overall concentration and also why we see the most pronounced impact when looking at the most popular websites.
As I mentioned at the outset, measuring shifts in the concentration of Internet service providers and jurisdictions takes time. At Pulse, we’ll continue monitoring the SSL Certificate market and the other markets we collect data for. We’re looking forward to further opportunities to analyze the results whenever we can identify interesting stories that can help us understand the evolving landscape of Internet service provision.
Check out the Pulse Concentration pages for yourself, and contact us if you have questions or observations about the data presented there.