40% of Twitter Users Will Be in Asia-Pacific by 2018 [Study]

By 2018, Twitter will reach approximately 400 million users worldwide, with more than 40 percent of them in Asia-Pacific, eMarketer estimates.

In its latest research, eMarketer projects that Twitter’s user base will increase 24.4 percent in 2014, and the growth will continue in the double-digits through 2018.

From a regional standpoint, there are already more Twitter users in Asia-Pacific than North America and Western Europe. This year, Asia-Pacific will account for 32.8 percent of Twitter users worldwide, compared to 23.7 percent in North America and 16.8 percent in Western Europe.

And that share will grow even larger if the microblogging service becomes available in China.

A look at different countries in the region reveals that India and Indonesia will experience the most consistent growth from 2012 to 2018. The number of Twitter users there this year will reach 18.1 million and 15.3 million, respectively, both exceeding the U.K.’s numbers for the first time.

The U.S., which now represents more than one-fifth of global Twitter users, will have the largest number of individual Twitter users throughout the forecast period. But the share will drop, says eMarketer, as the Twitter user growth in the U.S. matures.

eMarketer’s projections are based on an analysis of about 400 data points from more than 90 sources.