Taken from
eMarketer's article
Internet to Hit 3 Billion Users in 2015
and
India Rivals US as No. 2 Internet Audience
Nearly half the world's population will have regular access to the web by 2018
The number of internet users worldwide will surpass 3 billion in 2015, according to new figures from eMarketer, increasing 6.2% next year to reach 42.4% of the entire world's population.
This year, the internet will reach more than two in five people in the world for the first time as online audience hits 2.89 billion users globally. By 2018, eMarketer estimates, nearly half the world's population, or 3.6 billion people, will access the internet at least once each month.
"Inexpensive mobile phones and mobile broadband connections are driving internet access and usage in countries where fixed internet has been out of reach for consumers, whether that's due to lack of infrastructure or affordability," said Monica Peart, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer. "While highly developed markets are nearly saturated in terms of internet users, there's significant room for growth in emerging ones; for example, India and Indonesia will both see double-digit growth in each year between now and 2018." (Later eMarketer updated the Indonesia annual growth year 2017 and 2018)
On a country-by-country basis, here are year-by-year other milestones eMarketer anticipates during our forecast period:
2014: Brazil will supplant Japan as fourth-largest internet user population
2015: Mexico will settle firmly into the eighth spot, eclipsing Germany
2016: India will jump the US as the second-largest internet user population
2017: Indonesia will reach the top five, overtaking Japan
2018: China will eclipse three-quarters of a billion users, after showing accelerating growth in each year in our forecast
Indonesia will surpass Japan but remain behind Brazil
In Indonesia, eMarketer already estimates penetration is higher than it will be in India by the end of forecast period. But that also means slower growth in the country, which has the fourth-largest overall population and the sixth-largest internet population this year.
Destined to outpace Japan, but not Brazil, in internet market size by 2017, Indonesia will continue to grow its internet penetration until reaching nearly 47% in 2018. Double-digit growth will be over, however, by 2016, when about two in five residents is online.
While substantial compared to most other countries in the world, the Indian and Indonesian internet markets will continue to be dwarfed by China’s for the foreseeable future.
