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Monthly Newsletter - HTML Format

Internet World Stats News

Number 014 - January, 2006


One Billion Internet Users



Table of Contents

Editorial

On this special occasion we are glad to confirm that documented (sourced) Internet worldwide usage as of December 2005 has reached and surpassed one billion users.

Below, in this first issue of the IWS Newsletter for the year 2006, are the details about this important event. The world population figures have also been adjusted to reflect the current estimates for 2006 at the
world-gazetteer web site, the source for our population data. The total world population has reached 6,500 billion. Naturally this update affects the penetration rate data, which has been updated also.


First Billion Internet Users

Worldwide Internet usage reached and surpassed the first billion people on December 2005, according to data compiled by the Internet World Stats web site. Growth in all countries and regions of the world shows an increase of 182% between 2000 and 2005.

Presently 1,018 million people use the Internet, this represents approximately 15.7% of total world population. Detailed distribution and growth by world regions can be seen at the Big Picture Stats page. It is interesting to observe that the less penetrated parts of the world, which are Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, show the largest growth rates during the five year period analyzed by
Internet World Stats.

The Middle East region possesses the highest growth rate, 454.2%, users having increased from 3,284,800 to 18,203,500 million people. Next in growth is Africa with 403.7%, where usage increased from 4,514,400 to 22,737,500 million people. Latin America and the Caribbean also exhibit an important five year increase from 18,068,919 to 79,033,597 Internet users, equivalent to 337.4% in growth.

Internet users in Asia increased by 249,967,713 people, the largest growth in absolute terms. Europe increased by 185,025,864 people, equivalent to a 176.1% growth, in the five year period studied. Oceania and Northern America, the more mature Internet usage regions, exhibit the lowest growth rates, 134.8% and 108.9%. For further details, visit
Internet World Stats.

The above information corresponds to data duly sourced and compiled by the Miniwatts Marketing Group, a market research firm located in Bogota, Colombia that has published the Internet World Stats for over five years.

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Global English

Today the undisputed global language in the world is English. This fact is corroborated by the Internet Language Statistics published by Internet World Stats, updated as of December, 2005. Interestingly, Russia has also made the ranks as one of the ten most important languages in the Internet.

Tallying the number of speakers of the world's languages is an increasingly complex task, particularly with the push in many countries to teach English in their public schools. How many people can actually use the global language? David Graddol estimated a total of 750 million L1 (first or native language) plus L2 (second or nth language) speakers of English in his Future of English Report for the British Council in 1997. One of our subscribers, Martin Schell, has reviewed Prof. Braj Kachru's new book Asian Englishes which claims that India and China combined have over half a billion "users" of English.

The great majority of web pages are in English, and correspondingly the great majority of Internet users surf in English. However English is not the same the world over. For further reading on Global English, please refer to the note and links underneath the
Internet Language Stats Table.


Very truly yours,

Enrique de Argaez,
editor and webmaster



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