A new survey by Ipsos Insight suggests South Korea may have lost its generally-accepted status as the world’s “most-wired” country.
For years, industry watchers have considered South Korea the world’s leading Internet nation based on the depth of its broadband penetration, and, indeed, Ipsos Insight’s survey of 6,500 people in 12 countries found that 68 percent of South Korean’s said they had used the Internet during the last month. However, that would place the country in fourth place, behind Japan (89 percent), Canada (72 percent), and the United States (71 percent). Although Ipsos’s survey only covered urban areas in China and India, China came in with 50 percent of respondents having used the Internet in the last month, with India registering at just 15 percent of respondents.
South Koreans also don’t spend the most time online: instead, Chinese internet users came out on top, spending an average of 17.9 hours a week on the Internet (although, remember, these are urban survey respondents). Internet users in Japan logged 13.9 hours on the Internet each week, Koreans spent 12.7 hours online each week, while respondents in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico spend 12.3, 11.4, and 9.2 hours online each week, respectively.
The Ipsos survey was issues only a few days after a World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. as number one on its “networked readiness” index: South Korea placed 14th on that same list.
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