India has leapfrogged Japan to become the world's third biggest Internet population, growing 31 percent from the year before to 73.9 million users.
This puts the country just behind global leader China with 348.2 million users, and the United States with 191.4 million users, according to a ComScore study India Digital Future in Focus 2013 released on Thursday. India's online population growth was only second to Brazil, which posted a 37 percent increase to 62.1 million.
"With an extended online universe in excess of 145 million the market is at a tipping point for online businesses," said the report. The extended universe includes PCs accessed from Internet cafes and mobile devices accessing the Internet.
Other key highlights:
As of March 2013, Asia-Pacific had a total of 644 million home and work Internet users. China accounted for more than half at 54 percent, followed by India (11.5 percent), Japan (11.4 percent), and Southeast Asia (9.6 percent).