The number of people on the Internet surpassed one billion in December, according to comScore. The actual number is probably higher than that (Internet World Stats counted nearly 1.5 billion Web surfers worldwide as of June 30, 2008). In any case, only between 15 and 22 percent of the world’s population is on the Internet. We have a long way to go.
Using the comScore numbers, here is the breakdown by country and region (in unique visitors as of December, 2008; some of the numbers are rounded):
Top 15 countries, by Internet population:
- China: 179.7 million
- United States: 163.3 million
- Japan: 60.0 million
- Germany: 37.0 million
- United Kingdom: 36.7 million
- France: 34.0 million
- India: 32.1 million
- Russia: 29.0 million
- Brazil: 27.7 million
- South Korea: 27.3 million
- Canada: 21.8 million
- Italy: 20.8 million
- Spain: 17.9 million
- Mexico: 12.5 million
- Netherlands: 11.8 million
Worldwide Internet Audience
- Asia Pacific: 416 million (41.3%)
- Europe: 283 million (28.0%)
- North America: 185 million (18.4%)
- Latin America: 75 million (7.4%)
- Middle East & Africa: 49 million (4.8%)
(Photo by Joe Shlabotnik).
Canada’s at almost 2/3rds of their population on the internet according to this.
I am pretty surprised by this fact too…
China only has a small percentage of their population active on the Internet, wait until the Internet becomes available to more Chinese, and the stats will look hugely different. I think eventually China will have the same amount of people on the Internet as the rest of the world combined.
Also, almost every single one of my friends here in Vancouver BC Canada is on the Internet EVERY single day, so these stats do appear logical. Canadians are very Tech savvy, and yes we still live in Igloos GEEZ.
Have a great weekend !
Yeah, I’ve got a friend in Vancouver and he says the same thing. I guess Canadians are just ahead of the technological curve.
twitter.com/dankalmar
Well, think about it: access to internet is an urban thing.
Canada is sparse. It’s cities are big population spikes compared to the outlaying population density.
Doesn’t surprise me they have such a large portion covered.
It seems that my nation of Canada has the highest percentage of its population on-line! Go Canada!
Wow! imagine that, canadians stay inside in front of computer screens more than anyone else. maybe because it is so f’ing cold outside and oh yeah, Canada is boring as hell.
Be proud maplefaces.
@Michael L – apparently, Canada has 21.8 ⋅ 100 / 33.5 = 65% of its population on-line, while the Netherlands has 11.8 ⋅ 100 / 16.4 = 72% on-line. Now, whether that’s something to be proud of is an entirely different matter
Canada and the Netherlands also share other things in common. Like open mindedness and a culture built around freedom of choice and expression.
All the best in 2009.
and sh!t weather. good reason to stay inside. that is the reason genius.
Hi,
China’s dominance wont be that much. As China grows, India will grow too. China will still remain number one and India having at least two thirds as big as China.
I wish there was also a chart of percentages – the population of the Netherlands is ~16 million, 11.8 million means 73.75%. I guess countries with a cold climate would end up highest when you’re counting percentages.
wonder how much india has lol!
-Jim
http://www.movi...nlineforum.com/
(just getting started so check it out)
Look at #7
Thats because Canada f**king RULES!
Interesting stats. I was pretty surprised to say the least when I heard that 1/4 of the U.S doesn’t have net access. Hopefully the new administration will improve on this and globally, more people get access.
Yeah, because our founders fought and died for the principle that the omnipotent majesty of Federal taxation should be levied to provide free intertainment utility services to uninterested consumers. Maybe when the Gov can deliver the mail, protect our borders and finish kicking enemy ass, they can get around to this.
Life, Liberty, and YouTube.
We’re doomed.
Two-thirds of Americans without broadband don’t want it
http://arstechn...nt-want-it.html
By my math, 163 million users is greater than half of the US population. That is a pretty astounding number considering that the US is the third most populous nation on earth.
Well they better do, because internet helped a lot to new administration. And if they want to stay that way, they should make net available to more people.
Soft power {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/ykyyoWfsEe_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Soft power ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/Iqo4pNJho5″}}}
Where is Iraq then looool
The Netherlands has a population of 16,645,313 (July 2008 est. according to http://tinyurl.com/2w6whd) so this is probably the highest ranking we can ever reach when you use absolute figures.
Indeed. The percentage of Dutch citizens that has access to the internet is 70,8%. and the vast majority of that is DSL, cable and increasingly fiber-optic cable.
Canada’s population is only 33million. 21m users is impressive! 80% of those have a facebook account haha
The internet is a way of life now.
The powers that be are desperate to find a way to police it but that’ll take some doing.
The figures are very impressive,more needs to be done to get the internet into 3rd countries to improve their education.
Way of life is great, literacy too, as long as we don’t end up like cyborg-zombies with Bluetooth implants.
ComScore data is just like statistics, 78% of them are made up.
Almost 50% of Japan’s population has access to internet!!! I think of these techies are online to play games and post porn at youtube?
wait are we talking about regular people or Lego people?
Interesting that the stats only include those 15 and over.
And the figures have to be taken in context of ‘fixed’ internet – PCs basically. Mobile internet would add a lot more…
Turkey has almost 20 million Internet users but it’s not on the list. I guess this data excludes countries where comScore is not operating.
some are not really been written..
tets
I lub legos
These numbers are definitely wrong. Here in Brazil for instance, the most accepted statistics says we are 38M active users with home access/43M counting work/school access. But there are some respectful sources claiming that the number of users is past 60M actually. Either way, it`s not only 27.7M for sure.
These numbers are obviously hokey. As pointed out above, Canada has 33 million inhabitants and they claim that almost 22 million of those have internet access. Similarly the Netherlands has 16.4 million inhabitants and they claim 11.8 million have internet access? Maybe they count access based on IP addresses, in which case they count people who access the internet from work and at home double.
I live in the Netherlands, and i know pretty sure there are so many internet users here, maybe even more then 11.8 million. My grandfather is 76 and everyday he’s checking youtube to check 60s/70s music. Internet is as usual as TV in the Netherlands. Another nice stat, social networking site hyves.nl has 8.1 million users, that’s 50% of the country.
The Chinese government says they have 298 million “netizens” in China. That’s quite a bit more than the 180 million comscore reported.
Something has to be amiss at ComScore. Makes me want to see who got 16th – Thailand? Turkey?
22 million in Canada?
I don’t think so–the whole population is only 33 million. [Unless three-year olds are using the Internet in Canada, now.] I am high suspicious of these numbers.
The higher density of Canadian internet users vis a vis the US has been a known fact since either 200 or 2002. It is old news that Canada outpaced the US. It is not the only adoption of technolgy in which that is the case. It has alos been the case for online banking. In 2008, 67.1% of Cdn internet users bankd online vs. 44.4% of American users.
64% canadians are unique visitors ! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/17uCESYEt5_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”64% canadians are unique visitors ! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/DpztojyPWX”}}}
Hey Tc,
Could you also report # of total inhabitants of these countries?
And yes, AFAIK my country The Netherlands has a very high rate of internet access.
If you go to the original source it shows that Australia 16 million net users. So we should be in the top rankings.
Can you REALLY count China? With Google’s help, actual citizens use of the internet is highly restricted to commie-approved sites. It’s like a giant state run AOL net nanny. That ain’t internet, it’s mind control to spoonfeed state approved content.
Wow, you really know china! I’m impressed.
By year end, india will be in Top 5
Worldwide traffic.What’s stats?
Numbers are suspect. Mexico is part of North America but doesn’t seem to be included in the North America numbers. No telling what other basic errors are in the data. Was New Mexico counted as part of U.S. or Mexico for instance?
Internet is part of life of evrybody now.China and US are on top for internet sufing considering the amount of population India had and alos very improved in IT sector 32 million is small,expect more web surfers in the future from India.
@saman: Australia has a population of 21.5 million. somehow I doubt that 75% have Internet access (think of the babies, seniors, homeless, ppl who have no PCs ..)
If it is true, then it should be at number 14 in the first list.
Interesting to note that English speaking countries still reign supreme. 253.9 millions (us, canada, uk, india). Also, English speaking ability is mostly prevalent for educated Japanese, and many other countries as well.
So when building a web app, it still makes sense to target english first before branching out with other localizations. Chinese and Japanese would probably be a good second target.
India is an English Speaking country.
….yeah right!
Lol..on that….
I think we should also have a listing based on percentage of country who browser internet. Many smaller countries like Singapore will rate high on that.
with over a billion now on the web, it is still amazing that there is still an over 80% opportunity for growth.
I could not imagine life with out the Internet! All the Information and Money Making Opportunities keep me busy busy busy. Life is Great Online!!! JD
http://www.inte...s.com/top20.htm
This is more valuable:)
Where is Turkey???? this stat is bullshit
these statistics are non-sense…definitely the most populated country in the world will have the greatest population…this is illogical..the calculation should depend on the density of population in countries not on the population
do you mean ‘number of internet surfers per 100 people’?
does this stat include people who use internet via mobile only?
I wonder if they count me five times? I am an American that lives in Europe and have four computers as well as a mobile web device that I use daily (Nokia E90).
Astonishing figure.however,i must say that Google will take the opertunity to grow itself further and takeover its huge share on internet market place of advertising.as it has done in the past.
I hope people also will take this opertunity to reveal the real issue,s of life rather propaganda,s..
Australia has 15.5 million connected to the net, we should be at 14, more than Mexico. Shame we missed out. We probably have the slowest speeds as well. Thanks Telstra.
Wow, that is a WHOLE lot of people!
RT
http://www.priv...cy-tools.net.tc
you must use the percentage of Population Penetration.
Time spent on the internet should be equally important. I live in China and I’ve never seen people spend SO much time on the internet, almost completely avoiding face to face encounters. Even at work here people would prefer to chat on MSN than talk directly to the person next to them.
http://www.beyondbounds.org
Your all welcome.
well…i dont know about other countries, but india has very low percentage of people on the internet.
when compared to mobile services, internet services penetration is negligible.
and the number one reason for that is language issues.
although i think a lot will change when common will be made aware that they can work in hindi too
although, thanks to microsoft’s initiative, things are going to change a lot.
if anyone is interested in downloading indic tools, please check out
http://www.bhashaindia.com/
Nice…My country is at 7th(India). I hope it will soon be at 4th at least within few months.
Regards,
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
yeah agree but shud be in top 3 atleast…..
Would be nice if you would made it in percentages like: internet users/population of the country.
The netherlands you will find that 70% of the population uses the internet. China only 1% o_O
With a current population of 16,404,282 it seems absurd to state that 11,8 million people in the Netherlands of 15 years and older are connected to the internet. Specially taking into account that there are less than 8 million households.
I don’t understand why people are doubting the fact that the numbers are so high. I’m surprised at how low some of them are. Especially Japan, where high tech has been every where for a long time – the idea that half of them aren’t even on the internet is hard for me to believe. Everyone I know is on the internet and that’s not just tech geeks. I’m talking about guys who only a few years ago still swore that they would never own a cell phone, who now use facebook to organise Friday night trips to the pub.
yes man, where is Turkey? (Türkiye)
@socrates maybe everyone in .nl has two different internet connections.
wow, so many chinese. a little surprised