New Delhi: India has emerged as the fastest growing country of Internet users, surpassing the growth rates in the US, China, Japan and has been ranked as the eighth largest country in terms of netizens.
The number of people using Internet worldwide grew by 10 per cent in a year till January to 747 million people with India topping the growth charts with a 33 per cent jump, a new study shows.
According to data compiled by Internet usage tracking firm comScore Networks, India had over 21 million Internet users aged over 15 years at the end of January, as against below 16 million a year ago.
While the US has retained its position being home to the world's biggest online population with over 153 million total Internet users, it registered a marginal growth of just two per cent in a year.
China has emerged as the second biggest Internet population with 86.8 million users, followed by Japan with 53.6 million, Germany (32 million) and the UK (30 million) in the top five.
India has been ranked eighth ahead of countries including Canada, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Russia, the Netherlands and Mexico.
However, the growth rate in India was far ahead of countries having a much larger online population like the US, UK, Japan, Germany, South Korea, France, Spain and the Netherlands- registering only single-digit growth rates.
Internet users outside the US now account for 80 per cent of the world's online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year, comScore Networks Europe MD Bob Ivins said.
Among the top 15 countries ranked according to penetration, Internet users in India grew by the maximum 33 per cent, followed by the Russian Federation and China vying for the other honours with 21 and 20 per cent respectively, comScore said.
However, India has lost out in the list of top 10 nations in terms of time spent on Internet.
Canada led the list of top 10 countries ranked by average hours online per visitor for January, with the average user spending 39.6 hours (and 41.3 hours/ month among broadband users) online during the month.
Canada was followed by Israel, South Korea, the US and the UK among the top five countries -- all having a high broadband penetration rate.
The study found out that in each of the top 10 countries, the time spent online by users with a broadband connection was substantially greater than the time spent by users with a narrowband connection.
We have all believed that 'always-on' broadband connections stimulate usage this study empirically confirms that conclusion, Ivins commented.
While listing out the top global Internet properties, comScore said that Microsoft Sites topped the list with 510.3 million worldwide visitors, followed by Google Sites with 502.5 million worldwide visitors, while Yahoo! Sites registered 467.8 million unique visitors, the study says.
Web auction site eBay attracted more visitors (248.85 million) as compared to rival Amazon sites who managed draw attention of only 149.81 million netizens.
Open-source encyclopedia Wiki sites had 189 million surfers visiting their pages, comScore said.
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