Some very positive new statistics about the use of the internet in India have been released. 12% or 49 million people are now connected to the internet, with about 35 million of them using the internet at least once per month.
Not surprisingly, the majority of internet users are young – 77% are between the ages of 19 to 35. Surprisingly, India’s net user demographics cuts evenly across socio-economic class.
What’s most interesting about these statistics is the language preference: “over 70% prefer to access the net in Indian languages, with English users at just 28%, down from 41% in 2007.” To me, this shows what I’ve been saying all along, which is that people prefer to access the internet in their native language, even if they know English. This bodes well for IDNs in India.
