ComScore: Internet Population Passes One Billion; Top 15 Countries
Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog.
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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).
