The Internet Audience Keeps on Growing

Data released today by comScore for January shows that the internet audience worldwide just keeps growing. The numbers are mind-numbing.

There are 747 million people worldwide using the Internet (some sources have it at over a billion), which is up by 10% from the previous year. The largest country is still the US which grew by 2% to 153,447,000. With seven out of ten people in North America accessing the web that market is already saturated with internet users. The same is true for countries like Germany, UK, France and Spain, where the percentage growth is less than 5%.

But look at China and India. They are both growing at phenomenal rates. China is the second largest country after the US in terms of number of people accessing the Internet (86,757,000). Chinese internet users grew by 20% over the year, yet the penetration of the internet in China is still less than 10%. The story about India is similar though less radical. The total internet user population in India is 21,107,000 and it’s growing at 33%.

Africa is a blip on the radar – in the entire continent of Africa there are 33 million users of the internet, which accounts for only 3% of world internet users. (The total number of people who have access to the internet in South Africa is 5 million of which 2.5 million access it monthly. Yet approximately 7.5 million people access South African internet sites each month, which shows strong foreign interest).