Comscore's India Internet Report - Internet penetration at 3% only!

Comscore has released the Indian internet statistics and here are the key findings:

Indian Internet population stands at 22 million
The Internet penetration in India is only 3%!
Yahoo! sites lead the pack with 14 million unique visitors in April 2007
Google’s network has grown 16 per cent between November 2006 and April 2007
Microsoft has 10.3 million unique visitors in April 2007, while Rediff.com has 7.2 million unique visitors
Time Warner network (i.e. AOL + HBO + Cartoon network etc) showed a sharp spike of 71.8 per cent to 4 million unique visitors between November and December 2006
In terms of engagement, Yahoo’s reach is 64 per cent while Google’s is 62 per cent
Google scores higher in terms of the time spent by visitors on its networks, at almost 4.5 hours per visitor for April 2007, while Y! is at 4.2 hrs.
On the Microsoft and Rediff.com networks, the time spent per unique visitor in April 2007 is 1.6 hours and 1.4 hours respectively
In terms of the most visited categories of websites by Indian audiences, ‘Corporate Presence’ websites score the highest with a reach of 73 per cent (for April 2007)
Search as an activity has gone up by 11 per cent over the six-month period under study, with 14 million users
Google search predictably leads with almost 12 million users, though Yahoo! search has grown faster than Google during the said period, at about 16 per cent

To summarize –

Y! is leading the way, but Google is getting traction in the market.
Bollywood still rules the Indian world (Entertainment’ websites, comprising mainly movies and music, have a reach of 52 per cent)
Does “Corporate presence” sites mean Indians are checking out corporate sites for job search?
Govt. site www.nic.in stands at number 9 (has engagement level of 23 minutes per visitor). which basically means Indians are expecting more online/e-gov initiatives from the govt.

Comscore has also released APAC region (which accounts for 1/3rd of World’s Online Population) Internet data and here is a quick summary:

South Korea has the highest Internet penetration (65%), while India is at the lowest end (3%)
Yahoo! sites are most popular in the region (but as expected, Google isn’t too far)
China clearly has the largest online population with 91.5 million people
South Korea has the most active online population, using the Internet an average of 17.4 days per person
Indians spend close to 14.7 hours per month (per person).

Source: agencyfaqs (download the report), comscore

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