• by Masha Geller , May 9, 2002

What’s the first thing you do when you log on to the Internet every day? Probably check you email, right? Congratulations, you’re a statistic! According to the Nielsen//NetRatings First Quarter 2002 Global Internet Trends report, released today, sending and receiving email was the dominant online activity in 12 countries over the past six months - at least 75% of the world’s households with Internet access use email.

"Of all the popular Internet applications, email is the global activity of choice," said Richard Goosey, chief of measurement science at NetRatings, adding that an impressive 90% of the adults in three major markets outside U.S. and Japan - Australia, the UK and the Netherlands - used email over the past six months, though the percentages were high for all 12 countries.

In contrast, involvement in chat rooms was lower than 30% in all countries except Brazil, where 41% of adult Internet users visited chat rooms, and in Spain where 38% used chat rooms. Additionally, looking at audio-visual content and using Internet radio was well below 50% in all countries, and instant messaging has less than 30% penetration in several countries, including France, Germany and Italy.

Globally, the number of people with access to the Internet via a home PC increased from 498.2 million people in Q4 2001 to 531.3 million in Q1 2002. North America is the biggest region, contributing 34% of the total global Internet population, followed by Europe and the Middle East at 27%, Asia & the Pacific at 21%, and Latin America at 2%.

Of the 12 countries covered in this report outside the U.S. and Japan, Germany (32.2 million), the United Kingdom (29 million) and Italy (21.1 million) have the largest number of people with Internet access via a home PC. With a combined 82 million people with home Internet access, these three countries account for about half (53%) of the total for all 12 countries. Since last quarter, the United Kingdom experienced the largest growth in people with home Internet access, with 4.2 million people and 1.5 million households gaining access to the Internet via a home PC.