arabic 2.9% of the Internet are ArabsArabs online have witnessed a whopping 2,000% increase in population over the past 9 years rendering Arabic as the 8th top language used on the web at 2.9%.

Internet World Stats has published these results also showing that only 17.3% of Arabic speakers have internet access, the lowest amongst the top 10. This means that there’s a remarkable growth opportunity for content creation catered towards Arabs.

The stats, however, do not show what the users’ preferred language is. Arabic speakers might prefer reading content in English or French. In fact, while Arabic speakers are comfortable reading a political news article in Arabic, they might check the technical specs of a mobile phone in English.

The study was conducted based on an exclusive one-language per user approach. In other words, English speaking Arabs would not count as English users.

What the stats do confirm is that if you were to launch a campaign talking to all Arabs, you might want to keep your print ads, radio and TV commercials running alongside.

Enough analysis, let’s look at the figures.

Top Ten Languages on the Internet (in millions of users)

languages20091 2.9% of the Internet are Arabs

Top Ten Languages Used in the Web (Number of Internet Users by Language)

TOP TEN LANGUAGES
IN THE INTERNET		 Internet Users
by Language		 Internet
Penetration
by Language		 Growth in Internet
( 2000 – 2009 )		 Internet Users
% of Total		 World Population for this Language
(2009 Estimate)
English 478,442,379 37.9 % 237.0 % 27.6 % 1,263,830,976
Chinese 383,650,713 27.9 % 1,087.7 % 22.1 % 1,373,859,774
Spanish 136,524,063 33.2 % 650.9 % 7.9 % 411,631,985
Japanese 95,979,000 75.5 % 103.9 % 5.5 % 127,078,679
French 78,972,116 18.6 % 547.4 % 4.6 % 425,622,855
Portuguese 73,052,600 29.5 % 864.3 % 4.2 % 247,223,493
German 64,593,535 67.0 % 133.2 % 3.7 % 96,389,702
Arabic 50,422,300 17.3 % 1,907.9 % 2.9 % 291,798,743
Russian 45,250,000 32.3 % 1,359.7 % 2.6 % 140,041,247
Korean 37,475,800 52.7 % 96.8 % 2.2 % 71,174,317
TOP 10 LANGUAGES 1,444,362,506 32.5 % 363.5 % 83.3 % 4,448,651,771
Rest of the
Languages		 289,631,235 12.5 % 487.1 % 16.7 % 2,319,153,437
WORLD TOTAL 1,733,993,741 25.6 % 380.3 % 100.0 % 6,767,805,208

Additional details are available via Internet World Stats.