Where India Fares on the Internet Access Ladder

comScore recently released a report entitled, Digital World: The State of the Internet, which provides information regarding worldwide internet usage trends. Here is an abstract of the report:

comScore’s DIGITAL WORLD: The State of the Internet provides an indispensable reference tool for any marketer, website publisher, or investor who needs to understand how the Internet is being used, what trends are emerging in a wide variety of categories, and where future growth indicates new opportunities reside in order to optimize their online investment. Plus, the report provides the first look into a number of worldwide markets, including China, Japan, and India.

According to the report, “69 billion online searches (conducted by 775 unique people) occurred worldwide in October 2007, representing about 12% of the world’s population.” As one might expect, the United States is the leader in terms of number of searches (21%), followed by China (9.5%).  India, surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), ranks 8th of this list. As pointed out by Ashish on pluGGd.in, India’s position doesn’t seem too shabby, unless, of course, you account for its user base with respect to its overall population.

Click “read more” to see a table from the report.

 According to Startup Dunia, if you see the above penetration in terms of percentage of population, the table looks like below:

US – 53 %; China – 7.2 %; Japan – 42.3%; Germany – 40%; UK – 53.3%; France – 43.2%; South korea – 53%; India – 2.23%

Please note – India and China, two of the world’s most populous nations, are still in the single digits in terms of internet usage. Thoughts?