April 10, 2009

71% of Internet users live in Non-metros

Internet research firm, JuxtConsult, has released the findings of its annual study, India Online 2009, which tracks the usage and preferences of Internet users in India.
  • Total number of Internet users in India has gone down from 49 million in 2008 to 47 million in 2009.
  • Of the 47 million users, 39 million stay in urban areas and 8 million reside in rural places.
  • While 29% of the 47 million live in metros, 24% stay in tier II cities and 47% live in tier III cities and villages.
  • About 5 million also surf the Internet on mobile phones.
  • About 80% of the users are in the age group of 19-35 years.
  • The most popular activity online among regular Internet users is searching for travel products.
  • The second most popular activity is job search.
  • Among the most used websites are Google and Yahoo – 35% and 25% respectively.
  • Rediff and Indiatimes stand much lower and are used by 4% and 1% respectively.
  • YouTube is used by only 0.5% of regular Internet users. Orkut is used by 7% of 38.5 million internet users.
  • Yahoo is the preferred site for email (45% users), instant messaging, online news, net telephony and mobile content.
  • Gmail is also among the most used sites for email (44% users).
  • Google is the most used website for information search in English, search in local languages and cinema tickets.
  • Orkut is the most used website for friendship and dating, sharing pictures, social networking, and professional networking.
  • Of the regular users, 24 per cent also prefer to use LinkedIn for professional networking.
  • Among the classified websites, Naukri is used by 44% of regular Internet surfers for job search.
  • Makaan is the most used site for real estate search.
  • Bharatmatrimony is the most used portal for matrimony search.
  • YouTube is most used website for video sharing.
  • Raaga is the most used website for listening or streaming music.
  • IRCTC is the most used website for online travel purchases.
  • Ebay.in is the most preferred site for non-travel purchases.
  • ICICI Bank’s website is the most used site for Net banking.
  • ICICI Direct is used by 28% users for online share trading.
  • Moneycontrol.com is the most preferred site for financial news and information.
India Online 2009 is based on a land survey conducted between December 2008 and January 2009. The respondents comprised 135,000 individuals from 16,000 households in 40 cities and over 12,000 households in 480 villages, spread across the country. The Internet usage dynamics, such as the time spent on the Internet, frequency of usage, and how consumers access the Internet are based on a sample of over 50,000 active online panel members with JuxtConsult. Findings on popular online activities and website preferences are based on an online survey conducted in February and March 2009, among more than 12,500 respondents of the 50,000 active online panel members of JuxtConsult.

4 comments:

Rage Communications said...

Just an observation: most of the "popular" websites mentioned here have simple URLs. So if it's google, the user needs just key in google.com and so it follows. Is that another reason for their success?

aakashbhasin said...

It is very important to know how tier 2, tier 3 cities and villages are defined. In India if you cover 30 kms outside a metro doesn't get you to a village. It is also important how these villages were selected. If for North India they ended up selecting 20 villages from Punjab out of say 50 and rest from HP, Rajasthan, and may some near Jammu, the results will be bias as state of Punjab is much properus (in monetary sense) than rest of the status...so more details are definitely required...

Rajesh Rajoo said...

@ aakashbhasin: another question that arises out of your poser: is prosperity directly proportional to internet usage?

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