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Mobile internet usage on rise in India
India has been growing in every sense of the world. Today, India ranks fourth among the top 10 nations in the world, when it comes to internet usage. Obviously, U.S. leads all the way with 220 million internet users subsequently followed by China 210 million and Japan 88.1 million. China will outdo the U.S. in internet use by 2011.
Brazil is ranked 5th with 53.1 million users, UK 40.2 million, Germany 39.1 million, republic of Korea 35.5 million, followed by Italy and France.
Internet users
• 1.73 billion – worldwide (September 2009).
• 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
• 738,257,230 – Asia.
• 418,029,796 – Europe.
• 252,908,000 – North America.
• 179,031,479 – Latin America / Caribbean.
• 67,371,700 – Africa.
• 57,425,046 – Middle East.
• 20,970,490 – Oceania / Australia.
Social media users
• 126 million – Total number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 84% – Social network sites comprising more women than men.
• 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
• 57% – Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
• 350 million – People on Facebook.
• 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
• 500,000 – The number of active Facebook members.
Mobile internet usage to go up in India
The number of users who surf internet on personal computers be it desktops or laptops may not have risen on the expected lines however, innovative data plans offered by telecom operators and fall in the prices of handsets are expected to cover the gap with an increasing number of users wanting to surf the net on their handsets.
According to Google, the number of people using mobile internet in India has almost doubled, nearly 8-10 million at the start of 2009. By March-April the rise was four-fold when it came to Google searches on mobiles.
Says Alok Goel, product manager, Mobile, Google India, India initially was looked upon as a low-end market, however, by February and March 2009, there was a sudden spurt in the number in mobile traffic in the mobile internet space.
As per industry analysts there are around 500 million mobile phone subscribers in India and with prices of handsets falling the numbers of people who surf the internet on their mobiles have reached to 10 million mark.
The low price of a general packet radio service (GPRS) ready mobile handset seems to a foremost factor driving the growth. Almost a year ago, an internet-enabled handset costs at least Rs 5,000. But today, a customer can buy a GPRS-enabled handset for just Rs 2,000.
Mobile internet usage is being primarily used for messaging, e-mail, social networking and entertainment. Social networking is evidently growing at a brisk rate and it perfectly suits in the scheme of things as it helps friends stay in constant touch regardless of the time or their location
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