Global internet usage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CIA figures for world internet use c.2002-3

This article is for information relating to the amount of people who use the internet by language, nationality, geography, class, etc.

1 Total number of Internet users
2 Number of users by language
3 Languages used on the internet
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Total number of Internet users

As of March 2006, approximately 1,023 million people worldwide use the Internet, according to Internet World Stats.

[edit] Number of users by language

According to Global Reach, the top languages are (in millions):

Language	Users (millions)
English	287.5
Chinese	102.6
Japanese	69.7
Spanish	65.6
German	52.9
Korean	29.9
French	28.0
Portuguese	25.7
Italian	24.3
Russian	18.5
Malay	13.6
Dutch	13.5
Arabic	10.5
Polish	9.5
Swedish	7.9
Turkish	5.8
Thai	4.9
Czech	4.2
Hebrew	3.8
Danish	3.5
Persian	3.4
Catalan	2.9
Norwegian	2.9
Finnish	2.8
Greek	2.7
Bulgarian	2.4
Romanian	2.4
Vietnamese	2.2
Hungarian	1.7
Slovak	1.2
Croatian	1.0
Ukrainian	0.9
Slovenian	0.8
Icelandic	0.2

Total number of users with European languages (excluding English): 276 million

Total number of users with Asian languages (excluding English): 241 million

[edit] Languages used on the internet

The most-used language on the Internet is English. Although the total number of native English speakers in the world is about 322 million, English is spoken as a second language by almost 200 million people around the world. They make their contributions to the Internet in their own language as well as in English.

Chinese is the most spoken language on Earth, and the second language on the Internet. The Chinese population online is increasing at a high rate; this is expected to have a great impact on the Internet in the near future.

Notably absent from the table below is Hindi, one of the most commonly spoken languages of the world, as well as the national language of India, the second most populated country in the world. This is due to factors such as the lack of access to the Internet by the large majority of the Indian population, and a preference for English among those users who have Internet access.The same can be said about Bangla which is another very commonly used language of the world.It is widely used in eastern India and is also the national language of Bangladesh.The Indian population online is also increasing at a high rate; this is also expected to have a great impact on the Internet in the near future.

The figures in the table below were taken from Global Reach [1]. These are an estimate at September 2004 of the world online population per language.

**Languages on the Internet**
Position	Language	Users(M)	% users	Total Population(M)	GDP ($B)	% of World Economy	GDP per capita
1	English	295.4	35.20%	508
2	Chinese	110.0	13.70%	874	$6,328	13.00%	$7,200
3	Spanish	72.0	9.00%	350	$2,500	8.90%	$7,100
4	Japanese	67.1	8.40%	125	$3,400	8.00%	$27,200
5	German	55.3	6.90%	100	$2,679	5.80%	$26,800
6	French	33.9	4.20%	77	$1,517	4.20%	$19,700
7	Korean	31.3	3.90%	78	$887	2.0	$11,400
8	Italian	30.4	3.30%	62	$1,251	3.60%	$20,100
9	Portuguese	24.4	3.10%	176	$1,487	3.60%	$8,400
10	Russian	22		167	$822	1.80%	$4,900
11	Malay	14.2	1.80%	229	$258	2.00%
12	Dutch	14.0	1.70%	20	$575		$28,500
13	Arabic	13.5	1.70%	300	$678	1.60%	$4,200
14	Polish	9.6	1.20%	44	$359		$8,100
15	Swedish	7.7		9	$237		$26,300
16	Thai	60		46	$406		$8,800
17	Turkish	6.8		67.4	$431		$6,400
18	Vietnamese	5.8		68
19	Persian	4.6		64	$84
20	Romanian	4.4		26	$108		$4,200
21	Czech	3.8		12	$121		$10,000
22	Hebrew	3.8		5.2	$132		$21,000
23	Danish	2.9		5.4	$171		$31,700
24	Finnish	2.8		6	$142		$23,600
25	Hungarian	2.5		10	$96		$9,600
26	Greek	2.4		12	$189		$15,800
27	Catalan	2.4		6.6
28	Norwegian	2.1		5	$136		$27,200
29	Slovak	1.8		5.6	$47		$8,700
30	Serbo-Croatian	1.0		20
31	Ukrainian	0.9		47	$115		$2,300
32	Punjabi	0.8		38
33	Slovenian	0.8		2	$22.90		$10,900
34	Icelandic	0.2		0.3	$6		$23,500
	WORLD TOTAL	801.4		6460	$41,400