India moved to Number 4 in total internet users

WOW!

India with all its top IT brains are now aiming for the next benchmark, top country with highest no. of Internet Users. Good going, but my immediate worry when looking at the awesome achievement is the percentage of penetration in the population. It is limited to only meagre 4.5%. This low penetration reflects the vast amount of untapped potential India has in the field. But things might not be too bad as the major players have now concentrated on market penetration and would be on top of there agenda for coming few years.I predict those absolute "number of users" figures for both india and china to explode over the next 10 years. They might very well be no. 2 and no. 1 respectively in the years to come, insofar as the number of heads are concerned. Of course, in terms of ecommerce transactions, the US will remain the no. 1 for the foreseeable future. But the difference even for this will keep getting smaller and smaller.

Top 20 Countries with Highest number of Internet Users.

#	Country or Region	Internet Users, Latest Data	Population ( 2006 Est. )	Internet Penetration
1	United States	203,824,428	299,093,237	68.1 %
2	China	111,000,000	1,306,724,067	8.5 %
3	Japan	86,300,000	128,389,000	67.2 %
4	India	50,600,000	1,112,225,812	4.5 %
5	Germany	48,722,055	82,515,988	59.0 %
6	United Kingdom	37,800,000	60,139,274	62.9 %
7	Korea (South)	33,900,000	50,633,265	67.0 %
8	Italy	28,870,000	59,115,261	48.8 %
9	France	26,214,174	61,004,840	43.0 %
10	Brazil	25,900,000	184,284,898	14.1 %
11	Russia	23,700,000	143,682,757	16.5 %
12	Canada	21,900,000	32,251,238	67.9 %
13	Indonesia	18,000,000	221,900,701	8.1 %
14	Spain	17,142,198	44,351,186	38.7 %
15	Mexico	16,995,400	105,149,952	16.2 %
16	Australia	14,189,544	20,750,052	68.4 %
17	Taiwan	13,800,000	22,896,488	60.3 %
18	Netherlands	10,806,328	16,386,216	65.9 %
19	Poland	10,600,000	38,115,814	27.8 %
20	Turkey	10,220,000	74,709,412	13.7 %

For more info visit : http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm