Some 10 million people went online in the United States in 2002, solidfying the country's top position in the number of Internet users, according to a survey released tonight.
The number of persons 16 years of age and older with Internet access rose to 168.6 million from 158.9 million in the comparable quarter the prior year, while the number of Internet users as a percentage of the population rose to 79 per cent from 76 per cent, according to the Nielsen-Netratings study.
The 11-nation survey found German in second place with 41.8 million Internet users, followed by Britain (30.4 million ) and Italy (25.3 million).
Spain had the highest percentage growth -- jumping from 10.1 million to 17 million users - but was in seventh place, lagging behind France (23 million) and Brazil (19.7 million).
Sweden ranked 10th with 6.1 million users but had the highest percentage of its population (85 per cent) online, ahead of the US market (79 per cent).
Australia ranked eighth in the survey with 10.5 million users and the Netherlands ninth (9.2 million) but both had a high percentage of Internet users (72 and 73 per cent, respectively).
Hong Kong, the 11th county in the survey, had a slight decline in the number of Internet users to 4.0 million, but that was 70 per cent of its adult population.
Separately, the survey found the United States had 29 per cent of the world's Internet population compared with 23 per cent for Europe and 13 per cent for the Asia-Pacific region.