On May 6, 2020 According to ‘Digital in India’ report by the Internet & Mobile Association of India(IAMAI) & Nielsen shows that for the 1st time has more internet users in rural areas than urban, where rural India had 227 million active internet users, 10% more than urban India’s about 205 million, as of November 2019.
i.India exceeds another milestone with 504 million active Internet users aged 5 years old or above, 53 million more than 451 million in March 2019, which makes it the 2nd largest internet user behind China, which has about 850 million users. The United States (US) has about 280-300 million users.
ii.There are around 71 million kids, aged 5-11 years, who go online using devices of family members. The numbers are boosted by the cheapest internet connections in the world.
iii.In Case of internet penetration, India is at 40% when compared to over 88% for the US and 61% for China, which makes India behind both countries.
iv.There was an increase in female internet users at 21% as compared to 9% for males during the March-November period & 26 million new female users accessed online during this period. These changes can be found on sites such as women-centric POPxo, which has increasing users from small towns and in local languages.
v.The possibility of adding new users in the middle of nowhere is greater in the coming few years. The top 8 metros had an internet penetration of 65% as of November 2019, compared to 63% as of March 2019.
Delhi tops in state-level Internet Penetration followed by Kerala
At the state level, Delhi retains the top spot in terms of Internet penetration followed by Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Punjab.
i.Among the metro cities, Mumbai has the highest internet population of 13 million, a growth of 12% followed by Delhi with 11.3 million, Bengaluru with 6.6 million along with 6.2 million in Kolkata and 6 million in Chennai, where all numbers denote the active internet users above 12 years of age. With the data available since November, the trend is now expected to accelerate
ii.Eastern states have comparatively low levels of internet penetration & is expected that the newfound momentum will help this region catch-up with the rest of the country. It had a 24% increase in the internet population in November 2019 compared with March 2019.
iii.Jharkhand and Bihar observed a 48% and 36% increase in internet population, which is higher compared to any other Indian states.
iv.According to age-wise statistics, two-thirds of Internet users in India are between the ages of 12-29 years, and this age group corresponds to more than 70% of Internet users in rural areas. The proportion of 12-29 years and 30 years is about 50:50 in Mumbai and Chennai
According to the data from analytics firm App Annie of Android phones
The time spent by Indians on smartphones increased by 24% to 4.3 hours per day in March, driven primarily by the lockdown, it was 3.5 hours a day on average in 2019. India witnessed the biggest jump in video consumption, of 40%, to over 2.9 billion hours during the week starting March 22 as compared to the last week of December 2019, when it was 2.1 billion hours. Indonesia saw a jump of 15%
Why is there an increase in the number of internet users?
The consumers during the lockdown spent more time on mobile games like Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds(PUBG), social networks like TikTok and Facebook, apart from using video-chatting applications like Zoom for interacting with friends and family, for office work and for online classes.
Active internet users– The users who have viewed the Internet at least once during the last month.
About IAMAI:
Headquarters– Mumbai, Maharashtra
Chairman– Amit Agarwal
President– Subho Ray
