In January 2008, the Asia Pacific Region have over 300 million Internet users at least 15 years of age accessing the Internet from work and home computers according to comScore’s “Digital World: State of the Internet report.
Asia Pacific Region Has Over 300 Million Internet Users
This is a 14 percent increase over a year ago and makes Asia Pacific the largest of the five worldwide regions. Latin America and Middle East-Africa also had above average growth during the past year, while North America and Europe have grown at more modest rates.
According to the comScore report the U.S. now accounts for 21 percent of Internet users globally. The growth in the number of Internet users in the U.S. has slowed, but several Asian and Eastern European countries continue to add news users at a high rate.
Google is the primary search brand in most countries, including Europe and Latin America. The exceptions are in countries where Chinese, Korean, and Russian languages dominate.
Chinese language search engine Baidu currently ranks # 3 in worldwide search market share, behind Google and Yahoo.
The number of global visitors to social networking sites has grown 34 percent in the past year to 530 million, representing about 2 out of every 3 Internet users. MySpace and Facebook are in tight competition for the worldwide leadership position, each pulling in more than 100 million visitors per month.
Online video has become the dominant online entertainment format, led by the global popularity of YouTube with more than 250 million visitors in January.
