The latest internetworldstats.com statistics show that worldwide Internet penetration
has increased to 16.0%, largely thanks to Asia. About 3 months ago when I last posted on
this, the worldwide penetration was 15.7%. Since then Asia has increased from 9.9 %
population penetration to 10.4%. As a % of world Internet penetration, Asia increased
from 35.6% to 36.5%.
China, as always, is at the heart of this change – they increased from 8.5% penetration
to 9.4% (making up 32.3% of Asia’s total). Japan is second in Asia, with 22.7% share –
but their country penetration is much higher at 67.2%.
Europe has also had a slight increase, from 36.1 % population penetration to 36.4 % –
but their global % has dropped from 28.5% to 28.2%. North America’s population
penetration has stayed steady, at 68.6%. However, mainly because of Asia’s increase, North
America’s global % has dropped from 22.2% to 21.8 %.
These might seem like minor changes, but bear in mind it’s only over 3 months –
imagine what Asia’s Internet penetration will look like in 2 years time, or 5 years!
Especially given they currently have 56.4% of the world’s population of 6.5 Billion.
Source: World Internet Usage
Statistics and Population Stats
Biggest Countries
More fascinating data in the following table, which shows the US still well ahead of China and
Japan in Internet users. Similar to the broadband penetration table (except
India, the world’s second biggest country, doesn’t even make the top 20 there).
Source: Internet Users – Top 20
Countries – Internet Usage
A sidenote: my own little country, New Zealand, is now the number 1 ranked country in the
world in terms of Internet Penetration. NZ has 76.3%! USA, the top ranked ‘big country’
is 7th with 68.6%.
Top 10 Languages
English still dominates on the Web, at 30%. But note that Chinese is actually more
widely used in real life, so one would think over time Chinese will become much more
prominent on the Web.
