The internet's population, mapped by nationality

MAP

Mark Graham's map reveals that northwestern Europe and Korea are ahead of the pack when it comes to internet penetration, while India, Indonesia and much of Africa lag behind.

The distortion in the map paints a revealing picture about human activity on the Internet. China is now home to the world's largest Internet population at over half a billion. The United States, India, and Japan then follow as the next most populous nations of Internet users.

Looking at the largest Internet countries, we see two important trends.

First, the rise of Asia as the main contributor to the world's Internet population; 42% of the world's Internet users live in Asia, and China, India, and Japan alone host more Internet users than Europe and North America combined.

Second, few of the world's largest Internet countries fall into the top category (>80%) of Internet penetration (and indeed India falls into the lowest category, at <20% penetration). In other words, in all of the world's largest Internet nations, there is still substantial room for growth.

Internet Population and Penetration