Israel second in the world in Internet use

Comes in second only to Canada in the average amount of hours spent online.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Israel ranked second only to Canada in the average amount of hours spent online, comScore Networks has reported. Canadian surfers spend 39.6 hours a month online while Israeli web users are a close second at 37.4 hours/month. South Korea came in third with 34 hours/month followed by the US (31.6), the UK (31.2), Chile (30.9), Brazil (30.2), Finland (28.7), Spain (27.9) and Sweden (27.5). In each of the top 10 countries, the time spent online by users with a broadband connection was substantially greater than the time spent by users with a narrowband connection. According to comScore Networks, 747 million people, age 15+, used the Internet worldwide in January 2007, a 10-percent increase versus January 2006. Among the top 15 countries (ranked by penetration), Internet audiences in India, the Russian Federation and China increased the most in 2006, growing 33, 21 and 20 percent, respectively. China now represents the second-largest Internet population in the world, with 86.8 million users, after the US, which rose 2 percent year-over-year to 153.4 million users age 15 or older in January 2007. "The importance of the worldwide Internet population continues to grow," said Bob Ivins, managing director, comScore Europe. "Internet users outside the US now account for 80 percent of the world's online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year."