India overtakes Japan to become world's third-largest Internet user base

India with 73.9 million users is the world's third largest Internet population, overtaking Japan but behind China and the US, according to research firm comScore.

Rising number of mobile audience, devices and consumption habits reveal that consumers are becoming more platform agnostic in their digital media consumption and switch devices to stay up to date on email, news, social media, said comScore's India Digital Future in Focus 2013.

"Riding on a 31 percent year-on-year increase, India's online population grew to 73.9 million. With an extended online universe in excess of 145 million the market is at a tipping point for online businesses. India is the world's third largest Internet population," the report said.

The country overtook Japan by adding 17.6 million users in 2012, the comScore report said.

Of the total 644 million home and work Internet users in Asia-Pacific as of March 2013, China accounted for a lion's share of 54 percent followed by India (11.5 percent), Japan (11.4 percent), Southeast Asia (9.6 percent) and rest of APAC (13.5 percent).

On consumption, comScore said that media fragmentation is occurring at light speed in today's multi-platform environment, which features not only computers, but smartphones, tablets, gaming platforms and an ever-increasing number of emerging devices.