Internet in the past decade grew rapidly and has developed the businesses, economies and societies all over the globe. New online concepts and technologies are changing the way we work and communicate with each other. These new technologies are changing the way consumers shop and businesses sell their products. Because of the increased benefits of Internet, personally and commercially, many people are using Internet.

The latest statistics from the Internet World Stats state that the population of the world was estimated to be around 6.84 billions in June '10 with a growth rate of 1.14 percent from June '09. Where as the growth rate among Internet users is very high compared to population growth during the past year. World wide Internet users reached 1.96 billions by June '10 recording a year over year growth rate of 17.8 percent. The statistics also clearly state that there is a tremendous growth in Internet users over the past decade – growth rate of over 400 percent between 2000 to 2010.

Internet users reached almost 2 billions with 28.7 penetration rate

According to the Internet World Stats, world wide Internet users reached almost 2 billion by 30th June '10. There were about 1,966,514,816 online users with a penetration rate of 28.7 percent. It shows that nearly three out of every ten persons are Internet users.

North America dominating with highest Internet penetration rate

As from many years, North America is still holding its position as the region with highest Internet penetration levels across the world. The total number of Internet users in North America are more than 266 millions with a penetration rate of 77.4 percent. Countries like United States and Canada which belong to this geographic location have Internet penetration rate more than 75 percent. Australia and Europe were in second and third positions after North America, with 61.3 percent and 58.4 percent of penetration rate respectively.

Asia stands at the top of the table with highest number of Internet users throughout world. Around 42 percentage of the total Internet users are from Asia alone. But when it comes to Internet penetration rate, Asia is very low with only 21.5 percent. Asia's poor penetration rate can be attributed to the most populous countries like China (Internet penetration rate - 31.6 percent) and India (Internet penetration rate – less than 7 percent) which belong to this region.

Top 20 Internet user countries holding nearly 75 percentage

Of the total Internet users, almost three fourths (74.6 percent) are from top 20 countries with highest number of Internet users. China tops the list with 420 million users and United States stood at the second position with 239 million users. But when we compare penetration rates between these two countries, United States is far away from China. United States has more than 77 percent of penetration rate, whereas China has only 31.6 percent penetration rate, indicating that US is still dominating the Internet world. In the list of top 10 countries with most number of Internet users, Japan, India, Brazil, Germany, UK, Russia, France and Korea South follow after China and US.

Asia has 3 countries in the list of top 5 countries with highest number of Internet users and 5 in the list of top 10. Countries like China, Japan and India can be spotted in top 5 list. Russia and Korea South from this continent stood at 8th and 10th positions respectively. Europe is dominating other regions when it comes to Internet users penetration rate. 3 out of top 5 and 6 out of top 10 countries are from the continent Europe. Countries from this continent include Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark and Finland.

Overall, statistics point out that there is a significant improvement in the Internet usage across the globe compared to June ’09. Although, nearly three out of every ten persons are using the Internet today, there is still a huge chance for improvement in the coming years with Internet going mainstream in all the regions across the world.