The Number of Internet Users in India hit 71 million in 2009

According to the Internet in India [I-Cube] Report published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India [IAMAI] and IMRB, 71 million users have used internet during 2009. The number of active users who use internet once a month went up from 42 million in September 2008 to 52 million in September 2009 as per the study. This means that there is a growth of 19 percent on year to year basis. The increased number is due to the rise of internet users in remote area and lower socio-economic classes. This is a very interesting development because the total usage of different geographic locations have surpassed top cities and higher socio-economic classes in numbers. The report also indicates that internet usage went up from .3 hrs/week to 15.7 hrs/week.

The  rise of internet popularity is because of better content delivery, better applications and the more use of entertainment applications that contains downloading music or videos, interacting through social networking sites and  using micro-blogging sites to express individual opinion and also user-generated content sites. The young people are the biggest drivers for the surge of internet use. They mostly use internet for searching information and entertainment purpose. Subho Ray, president, IAMAI commented that they are quite happy about the fact that more people in the smaller town are taking internet seriously. They will further try to provide innovative content to the users in their own languages at reasonable cost and through their existing device.