India on top: trumps US, China in online population growth

ECONOMY

India on top: trumps US, China in online population growth








CORPORATE BUREAU, PTI


Posted online: Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 0000 hours IST

 




















NEW DELHI, AUG 16 :  India is taking over the world wide web in a big way outpacing the world—including big brothers like US, China, Japan and Germany in terms of growth in online population.

India's online population, measured in terms of people aged over 15 years accessing internet, rose 7.8% to 18.02 million in June, from 16.71 million three months ago in march, a latest survey from US-based technology research firm Comscore Networks reveals.

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The growth in the country's online population outscores the rise of 2.7% in the the world's overall online audience size, which rose to 713 million in June, from 694 million in March this year.

India has also become the ninth biggest country in terms of the total online population from its 10th position three months ago, while the US has retained its top slot with 153 million of web users. According to Internet & Mobile Association of India), total Indian online populations stands at 38 million users.

IAMAI President Subho Ray said: “The growth is higher in India due to a low base. The high economic growth and rapidly growing mobile population along with low broadband rates are also boosting growth.” At $5 per month, India has got the lowest broadband rates in the world. The respective figures for France, Korea, Japan are $35, $25 and $20, respectively.

Interestingly, the Comscore figures exclude the traffic from access through cyber cafes, mobile phones or PDAs. The total number of people accessing internet could be much higher if those aged below 15 years and the public computer data and new-age mediums such as mobiles and pdas are also taken into consideration.

The number of internet visitors rose less than 1% in the US, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, while UK, France and Australia have actually registered a decline from the March 2006 levels.

According to the Comscore June world metrix report published on Wednesday, China witnessed the second-biggest jump of 5.22%, Russia witnessed 5.14% growth, while online population of Japan, Korea, Canada and Brazil grew between 2%-4%.

The US continued to have the highest online population across the world of 153 million, which accounted for 21% of the all worldwide unique visitors, while India accounted for 2.5% of the worldwide total.

China maintained its second position with 78.31 million online population followed by Japan and Germany with 53.10 million and 31.97 million respectively.