Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that a total of 167,600 households had used the Internet in 2016, accounting for 88.6% of the total households, up by 2.3 percentage points year-on-year. This implied a growing prevalence of the Internet use among households. Moreover, the number of households using fibre optic broadband connection rose continuously, urging by 115.0% year-on-year to 77,900, which led to a fall in the number of households using fixed broadband connection by 36.2% to 71,200.
Internet users aged 3 and above totalled 499,900, up by 6.2% year-on-year; the Internet penetration rate was 81.6%, up by 4.0 percentage points. For the population aged 25-34, the Internet penetration rate reached 97.1%, up by 2.1 percentage point year-on-year. For the population aged 55 and above, the penetration rate rose by 5.2 percentage points to 50.8%. As regards frequency of using the Internet, 93.2% of the Internet users were daily Internet users, down by 1.2 percentage points year-on-year.
Regarding purpose of using the Internet, most of the Internet users used the Internet for Communication (91.5%) and Search for Information (61.3%), up by 1.1 and 1.3 percentage points respectively year-on-year; meanwhile, online shoppers rose substantially by 21.7% to 75,800. Median spending on online shopping was MOP 1,000 in the fourth quarter of 2016, same as the corresponding period in 2015; median spending on Travel Services and Clothing & Footwear, Handbags, etc. was also the same as in 2015, while that on Electronic Products dropped by 2.2% year-on-year to MOP 1,100.
Mobile phone users rose by 0.3% year-on-year to 561,400; the mobile phone penetration rate was 91.7%, down slightly by 0.5 percentage points. The proportion of Internet users using mobile phone to access the Internet (91.9%) increased by 0.6 percentage points year-on-year.
Owing to the greater variety of functions available on mobile phones and other devices, the proportion of households having computer equipment fell by 1.1 percentage point year-on-year to 77.9%, with 147,400 households. The computer penetration rate for population aged 3 and above decreased by 6.6 percentage points to 54.5%.
Survey on Information Technology Usage in the Household Sector for 2016 was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2016 through a supplementary questionnaire of the Employment Survey, to collect data on information technology usage among population aged 3 and above.