NEW YORK, NY – Asia’s share of the world’s online population will swell to 43% in four years, while North America will represent just 13% of Internet users, according to a new report by Forrester Research.

The total world-wide population of active Internet users (defined as those who have been online at least once in the past month) will be about 2.17 billion in 2014, up from 1.46 billion last year, Forrester says.

Faster adoption in Asia will lead to a widening gap in the global distribution of users. The continent will represent 43% of the world’s online population by 2013, up from 38% in 2008. The U.S. and Canada, in contrast, will see slower growth, and their share of the world-wide populace will shrink to 13%, compared with 17% in 2008.

In addition, China’s online population is poised to surpass the U.S.’s this year (though a Chinese research organization believes it already has), says analyst Zia Daniell Wigder, the report’s author. “The U.S. is not going to be the center of the Internet universe.”

Online population doesn’t directly tie to e-commerce, she added, since spending is relatively low in Asia. But the audiences in countries such as China, India and Indonesia will represent a potentially lucrative market for some businesses because of their sheer size and rapid online growth.

Forrester arrived at the population estimates through measures of countries’ financial health and online penetration, as well as socioeconomic factors such as literacy and poverty rates.

Europe, like North America, will see its percentage of the world-wide Internet population decrease to 22% from 26% over the next four years, given its already high penetration of Internet users in Western Europe. Beyond China, other Asian countries with fast-growing Internet audiences include India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan, while growth will be slower in mature economies such as Japan and South Korea.

Latin America’s share of the online populace will remain virtually unchanged at 11% — more than half of its Internet users are based in Mexico or Brazil. Africa and the Middle East represent the smallest Internet audience, and will remain so in 2013 at 10%. Iran, Egypt and Nigeria, however, are among the world’s fastest-growing Internet populations, and Forrester predicts that the region’s growth rate will exceed 13% over the next five years.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. From http://www.wsj.com. By Andrew LaVallee.
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