With 100 million Internet subscribers, India is one of the fastest growing “Internet nation”. India had just 25,000 Internet users back in 1998 and India will see that number grow to 2 and a half times soon. India will see its number of Internet users triple to 237 million from the current 81 million by 2015, according to a report from BCG
In a study titled 'Internet's New Billion', the Boston Consulting Group said Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia (BRICI) will have more than 1.2 billion Internet users by 2015 - well over three times the number of Internet users in Japan and the US combined.
India's Internet use is concentrated mainly in the larger cities, where many users are migrants from smaller towns. This group tends to have had limited exposure to the internet and therefore typically has a narrower range of online needs than more experienced users.
"Offsetting this situation is the prevalence of younger Indian users," the report said. Indian internet users spend only half an hour online each day, on average--the lowest rate among all the BRICI countries.
This average will increase to only 0.7 hour per day by 2015, leaving India still bringing up the rear among BRICI users in terms of daily time spent online.
Describing India as a "low-maturity and high growth market", BCG said internet penetration rate in India is expected to reach 19 per cent by 2015, up from the current 7 per cent.
"There are currently about 81 million internet users in India--a number that will nearly triple by around 2015 to 237 million," the report said.
Last Friday, the Broadband Forum India announced that India added 2.5 million new lines of broadband last year. With such robust growth, it seems likely that the total number of Internet subscribers will triple by 2015.
“2010 was also a landmark year for broadband subscriptions – following the milestone half billion lines achieved in July 2010, subscriber figures continued to climb steadily and ended the year at 523,066,022 (globally) – a net addition of over 55 million lines during the year”, said the statement.
Asia has grown by a whopping 600 percent in the last decade and is set to be the continent with the most number of Internet users. China, India and Japan are leading the front in terms of rankings as well as in growth rates. India with a penetration of only 6.9 percent (lowest amongst the top three) and a growth rate of 50% in the last one year itself, and that is only going to increase in the times to come.
