Asian Net users: Korea leads pack
According to NetValue’s latest report on the global growth of Internet usage for the first half of year 2001, Hong Kong leads the list with 27.9 percent growth from January to June 2001. Spain is the fastest growing European market in the survey, with the percentage of households online increasing by 25.3 percent, while Korea ranks third with 15 percent. Internet growth in the US has stayed relatively constant since January.
The US dominates in terms of the sheer number of users online. In June, the US had more than 83 million users, more than all of the other countries in the survey put together. Following far behind in second place with 14.6 million users was Germany.
Korea reports the highest number of Internet users amongst the Asian markets surveyed and ranks fourth in the global list, just trailing the UK.
In terms of duration spent online, Singapore tops the list with users spending an average of 24 minutes per session in June.
The US maintains the highest number of Internet users, but Korea continues to lead globally with the highest proportion of visitors to e-commerce Web sites. 75.7 percent of Internet users in Korea visited an e-commerce Web site in June, of which 25.7 percent entered a secure area of the site (e.g. entering or transmitting credit card details). UK visitors to e-commerce sites report the highest incidence of engaging in secure connections at 44.1 percent, followed closely by Singapore (40.9 percent) and Hong Kong (39.4 percent).
The proportion of men going online still outnumbers women in all of the markets surveyed. However the gap appears to be closing. Surprisingly, the country that is bridging the gender gap is not the US, but Korea. In June, the male-female breakdown among Korean Internet users was 52.5 percent vs. 47.5 per cent. The remaining Asian markets – Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan – each reports approximately 43 percent of the Internet population as being female.
