WildBlueSkies - Trends and strategies in Digital Media

“India truly represents one of the most promising emerging Internet markets, given both the size and technological sophistication of the population. While global Internet brands like Google and Yahoo! currently reign as the most visited Web properties in India, several local players also have strong positions in the market,” according to Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president in comScore’s first study of Internet usage in India, which reports that more than 28 million people in India age 15 and older accessed the Internet from home and work locations in May. This represents a 27-percent increase versus year ago, making India one of the fastest-growing Internet populations among the 37 individually-reported countries in the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. The current penetration level of 3% - 4% also leaves a lot of room for growth.
Some findings from the study:

• The average Indian Internet user visited the Internet 25 times during the month and was online for 28 minutes per visit.
• Those between the ages of 15-24 were the heaviest Internet users among all age segments, spending nearly 12 hours online per month on average.
• Some of the fastest growing Web site categories during the past year included Maps (up 64 percent), Sports (up 60 percent), Entertainment - Movies (up 55 percent), and Finance – News/Research (up 52 percent).

Among the most visited websites, Google Sites ranked as the top property with nearly 20 million visitors in May, up 35% versus the previous year. With the Google Sites, Google Search rose 38% to 17.1 million visitors, Orkut rose 39% to 9.3 million visitors, Blogger.com up 102% to 7.3 million visitors, and YouTube up 131% to 6.3 million visitors.
Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 18.7 million visitors up 28%, followed by Microsoft Sites with 12 million up 11%. Indian portal Rediff.com ranked as the top local property with 9.2 million visitors up 19 percent, surprisingly followed by government site NIC.in with nearly 6 million visitors (up 5%).

Filed under: Everything, India, Statistics