Claimed to be the first true estimate of the world’s online population, a research company has pegged the global online audience at 694 million people aged over 15 years.

The new comScore World Metrix panel has representation in countries that make up 99% of the global Internet population. Over 2 million participate and allow comScore to track their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.

comScore states the the figure of 694 million (March figures) represents approximately 14% of the entire world population.

The top 5 countries in terms of numbers are:

United States - 152.04 million
China - 74.72 million
Japan - 52.1 million
Germany - 31.8 million
United Kingdom - 30.1 million.

The U.S. figure is now under 25% of the total online population - a decade ago it made up over 66% of all people online. This underlines the fact that there’s some other rather huge non-US markets out there, with the bulk of those people not having English as their primary language.

I was very surprised to see India with only 16.7 million online users - they must be 16 million very active users - no offense intended to my Indian friends :).

As for the Aussies:

Australia - 9.7 million

That’s around half the total Australian population. I’m not sure what that figure as a percentage of the population over the age of 15 would be - but it would be a vast majority.

As for the most active online users in average hours per month:

Israel - 57.5
Finland - 49.3
South Korea - 47.2
Netherlands - 43.5
Taiwan, Province of China - 43.2

Oddly enough, India was nowhere in the top 15. OK, so they may not be as active as I thought, they just must be more productive during the time they spend online :).

Australia wasn’t in the top 15 for activity, but that doesn’t surprise me as we’re still very much in love with our television - but that is changing.

Read more of the comScore report