Study: Japan, China Most Actively Embrace Web

The growth of new Internet users across the world seems to have slowed in 2005, with the largest percentage of surfers in Japan, and the most consistent users in China, CNET News.com reports.

These conclusions are based on a recent study released by market research firm Ipsos Insight and called “The Face of the Web,” according to CNET.

The study says worldwide Web population increased by only 5 percent from 2004 to 2005, 15 percent less than the previous year’s growth rate of 20 percent, CNET reports.

The volume of users Ipsos expects to surf the Web over the coming year is similar to 2004 and 2005’s projections, “indicating (that) prospects for growth in 2006 may be just as temperate,” the study said, according to CNET.

Japan took the first-place ranking in percentage of Internet users, with roughly nine out of 10 citizens saying they used the Web in the past 30 days, CNET reports. The study also says the average Japanese user spent almost 14 hours per week on the Internet, according to CNET.

In China, the average Web surfer spent almost 18 hours a week online, according to the study, but only half of those surveyed visited the Internet in the past month, CNET reports.

In North America, growth in Internet adoption flattened out, with a 70 percent rate of people who visited the Web in the past 30 days, consistent with 2005’s rate, according to CNET.

Laptop usage was on the rise in North America, according to the study, and at least 33 percent of people surveyed on the continent said they’d wirelessly accessed the Web in the past 30 days, CNET reports.

The survey sample included 6,500 randomly selected adults in the countries of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to CNET, and participants were surveyed last November and December.

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