Facebook, Twitter might be flavour of the season, but email remains more popular than social media as a method of Internet communication for Indians, says a survey.
According to global research firm Ipsos, 68 per cent of people across India, who are connected online, send and receive emails while about 60 per cent communicate via social networking sites.
"Internet penetration in India has been very good in recent years, however, relative to country like China, India still does lack behind," Biswarup Banerjee, Head of Marketing & Communications, Ipsos in India said. Only 25 per cent use voice-over IP (VOIP) for audio conversations conducted via an Internet connection.
The Indian trend of communicating online is largely similar to the global scenario, as a strong majority (85 per cent) of online-connected global citizens in 24 countries use the internet for emails. Globally, 60 per cent use it for social networking, and little over one in ten use the internet for connecting with people through voice-over IP. According to industry estimates, 103.6 million people will go online in 2012, and the number of users is expected to more than double to 221.6 million by 2015.
"This along with proliferation of internet access through smart phone will further increase the usage of email, social networking sites and other online communication tools," said Banerjee. Incidentally, according to another Ipsos survey, around 40 million Indians access the Internet through their smart phones, 56 per cent of smartphone users in the country access the Internet multiple times a day.
Nearly 40 per cent surf the net at least once a day and only 6 per cent never use their phone for connecting to the Web. Internet users in Hungary (94 per cent) are most likely to say they use the web for emailing, followed by nine in ten of those in Sweden (92 per cent), Belgium (91 per cent), Indonesia (91 per cent), Argentina (90 per cent) and Poland (90 per cent). Meanwhile, 83 per cent of Indonesians access the net for social media, in Argentina the figure stands at 76 per cent, Russia (75 per cent) and seven in ten of those in South Africa (73 per cent), Sweden (72 per cent), Spain (71 per cent) and Hungary (70 per cent).
"Although Facebook and other popular social networking sites, blogs and forums, were founded in the United States the percentage of users was lower at six in 10, and in Japan it fell to 35 per cent, the lowest of the 24 countries in the global survey," added Banerjee.
Ipsos interviewed a total of 19,216 adults in the month of February in an online survey across 24 countries.