Facebook, Twitter might be flavour of the season, but email remains more popular than social media as a method of Internet communication for Indians, a survey said.
According to global research firm Ipsos, 68% of people across India, who are connected online, send and receive emails while about 60% 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% 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%) of online-connected global citizens in 24 countries use the internet for emails. Globally, 60% use it for social networking, and little over one in ten use the internet for connecting with people through voice-over IP.
Also Read
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% of smartphone users in the country access the Internet multiple times a day. Nearly 40% surf the net at least once a day and only 6% never use their phone for connecting to the Web.
Internet users in Hungary (94%) are most likely to say they use the web for emailing, followed by nine in ten of those in Sweden (92%), Belgium (91%), Indonesia (91%), Argentina (90%) and Poland (90%).
Meanwhile, 83% of Indonesians access the net for social media, in Argentina the figure stands at 76%, Russia (75%) and seven in ten of those in South Africa (73%), Sweden (72%), Spain (71%) and Hungary (70%).
"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%, 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.
