Quarter of the planet to be online by 2012

According to the report by Jupiter Research, the total number of people online will climb to 1.8 billion by 2012, encompassing roughly 25 percent of the planet.

The company sees the highest growth rates in areas such as China, Russia, India and Brazil. Overall, the number of users online is predicted to grow by 44 percent in the time period between 2007 and 2012.

"Even though the emerging economies will have lower online penetration rates compared to the developed countries, Jupiter Research believes that they will ramp up the learning curve in adopting sophisticated online activities compared to the developing countries," said research director Vikram Sehgal.

The analyst firm sees Asia as an especially critical market, due to the high rate at which both its physical population and technological markets are growing.

"Asia will not only have the highest online growth rate compared to other regions in the world, but will also present a substantially large pool of sophisticated online users as a market to tap into," explained Jupiter Research president David Schatsky.