The number of Internet users in India is expected to rise 18.53 percent in the coming eight months to reach 24.3 crore by June 2014, on the back of higher adoption of mobiles as a means to access the Internet, a report Wednesday said.

India is also expected to overtake the US as the second largest Internet base in the world by the same time.

"The report estimates that by June 2014, India will have 243 million Internet users, at which point of time, it is expected to overtake the US as the second largest Internet base in the world," the I-Cube 2013 report, released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International said.

At present, China leads with more than 300 million Internet users while the US has an estimated 207 million Internet users.

The report said the number of Internet users in India has reached 20.5 crore as of October this year, registering a year-on-year growth of 40 percent over last year and by December 2013, it is expected to reach 21.3 crore.

"The Internet in India took more than a decade to move from 10 million to 100 million and only 3 years from 100 to 200 million. From here on, we can hope to develop a robust Internet ecosystem with a multitude of local and global players and a thriving Internet economy," said IAMAI Chairman Rajan Anandan.

The report said Internet access from mobile devices will see huge growth in the coming years.

"Mobile Internet is going to be the next game changer for Internet in India." it added.

The report said the number of mobile Internet users has witnessed a steady rise, with 11 crore users in October and is estimated to reach 13 crore by the end of December this year.

"Mobile usage and hence, mobile Internet usage has seen huge jump from the 2012 penetration levels. Compared to the 0.4 percent mobile Internet users in 2012, the penetration has grown to 2.4 percent, indicating a substantial growth in the mobile Internet user penetration levels," the report said.

Of all the active Internet users, close to 90 percent use Internet for online communication and under this, e-mail communication commands the highest share of 78 percent.

"Social Networking continues to be the rage with 75 percent of the users engaging in it actively while 69 percent use the Internet for entertainment," it said.

Apart from listening to songs and watching videos online, sizeable number of users are downloading mobile value added services (VAS) and online shopping has also picked up in a big way, it said.

"Every second active Internet user claims to have bought something or the other over the Internet," it added.

The Delhi High Court Tuesday asked social networking site Facebook to upload a disclaimer on its home page that children below the age of 13 years cannot open an account on it.
A division bench of Acting Chief Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru asked Facebook to not allow children under 13 years from opening an account.
Senior advocate Parag Tripathi appearing for Facebook assured the court that the site "will upload the disclaimer on its home page that children 13 years can not open the account".
"You (Facebook) can write on the home page in bold letters that children below 13 are not allowed. There is no harm in doing this," the court said.
The court also asked the central government to tell it as to what law it had for the online protection of children from being abused throught the social networking sites.
The judges also asked the government to inform them on provisions in the law related to a minor using a social networking site.
"In India what is the law for a minor to use Facebook? Is it 13, 16, 18 or no law? What is the requirement under Indian law for Facebook?," the court asked from the central government's counsel who in turn told it that in US the age to use social networking sites is 13 years.
"You don't have a law for protection of minor on social networking sites? You are behind the time...the world has gone much ahead," the court said.
The court was hearing a plea that said minors were allowed to open an account with social networking sites, including Facebook, which was illegal as Indian laws don't permit it.
The public interest litigation was filed by former Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue K.N. Govindacharya.
Appearing for Govindacharya, lawyer Veerag Gupta told the court that the recent incident in Gurgaon where a police found children involved in a sex and smoke party was the latest outcome of the non-compliance of guidelines by Facebook.
He added that hundreds of minor children gathered through Facebook for the party.
He said that Facebook and Google did not even have any email account to lodge complaint about minors misusing social networking sites.
Facebook also filed a reply on the plea and said that its terms and conditions "specifically prohibit children under 13 years of age from registering a Facebook account and using Facebook services".
"The condition forbids users from providing any false information on Facebook, creating an account for anyone other than him/herself without permission, or creating more than one personal account," the reply added.
Minors can only share content with friends, friends of those friends, and network (such as the school they attend, whereas adult can share content with all the Facebook users, the reply said, adding that the site has different privacy settings for minors.
Google, in its reply, said that before opening an account with social networking sites, one had to open an email account and for opening that he or she had to mention the age and if the user was below 13 years, he could not open an account with social networking sites.
It added that Google had already put in place a plethora of steps on the issue of safe usage of Internet.

Looks like more people are now accessing the Internet from Samsung smartphones compared to the ones accessing it through Apple's iPhones, which marks a reversal in smartphone Internet usage patterns.

According to a new report by web analytics firm StatCounter, users accessing the Internet from Samsung phones account for 25.47 percent, overtaking iPhone users by a difference of less than 1 percent. Internet usage from iPhones was at 25.09 percent, followed by usage from Nokia users at 21.96 percent and from BlackBerry users at 3.62 percent.

It's worth pointing out that these figures are based on a sample methodology. The StatCounter code is installed on more than 3
million websites globally that allows them to track usage. According to the company these sites cover various activities and geographic locations and record over 15 billion page views to these sites, every month.

Last year, Nokia led the pack in terms of mobile Internet usage from its phones, registering a usage of 28.05 percent, followed by Apple which saw usage of 25.43 percent and Samsung on 19.46 percent.

This essentially indicates that Internet usage from Samsung phones witnessed a rise of almost 6 percent implying that more Samsung users are browsing the web from their devices. Most Samsung smartphones are powered by Google's Android operating system.

It's worth pointing out that in countries such as UK and US, Internet usage from iPhones is still more than usage from Samsung phones. While 54.84 percent of all mobile Internet usage in the US was from iPhones, only 18.3 percent was from Samsung phones. Even in the UK, Apple leads with a usage share of 47.97 percent while Samsung's share was 20.45 percent.

In terms of mobile browsers, Android leads with a share of 29.06 percent, followed by Safari (iPhone and iPod touch only) which had a share of 24.98 percent. Opera was in the third place registering a share of 16.06 percent. Chrome for Android's share was 3.23 percent.

Talking about mobile operating systems, the report reveals that Internet usage from Android was at 37.93 percent, followed by iOS which was at 25.09 percent and Nokia's Series 40 platform at 13.43 percent. Windows Phone's share was still pretty low at 1.4 percent, behind BlackBerry which was at 3.46 percent.