The number of Internet users around the world is soaring and will total about 3.5 billion- or about half the Earth's estimated population of about 7.4 billion in 2017, according to a Sept. 4 report from Forrester Research. That means that about 1.1 billion additional people around the world will be online in the next five years, up from about 2.4 billion people who are online in 2012.
The report, Forrester Research World Online Population Forecast, 2012 to 2017 (Global), "found that 2.4 billion people across the world use the Internet on a regular basis …
… One year ago, an IDC report predicted that mobile Internet usage will top desktop usage by 2015. The report noted that the impact of smartphones and tablet computer adoption would be so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs would first stagnate and then slowly decline.
Between 2000 and 2010, the number of mobile users in developing countries surpassed those in high-income nations, jumping from 29 per cent to 77 in less-developed areas.
Already, between 80 and 95 per cent of the population of Kenya, Mexico, and Indonesia send text messages.
In the 12 years since the turn of the century, mobile phones have multiplied the world over, growing from less than 1 billion in use, to 6 billion this year – a pace that is unmatched in the history of technology, the World Bank said.”
… looked at 155 countries, assessing their access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT)…. The Geneva-based agency also said almost two billion people - about one-third of the world's population - had been internet users by the end of 2011.
In developed countries, 70% of the population was online, compared with 24% in developing regions, it said.
There were almost twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions globally as fixed broadband ones, said the agency.
The director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau, Brahima Sanou, said: "The surge in numbers of mobile-broadband subscriptions in developing countries has brought the internet to a multitude of new users."