Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that number of households using the Internet in 2019 increased by 6,900 year-on-year to 182,300, accounting for 92.3% of the total households. Number of households using fibre optic broadband connection continued to rise, up by 18.1% year-on-year to 138,800, taking up 76.1% of the total households using the Internet. The proportion of households using mobile broadband to access the Internet (178,500) grew by 3.3 percentage points to 97.9%, indicating that only a small number of households never use mobile broadband at home.
Internet users aged 3 and above totalled 554,000, a rise of 5.0% year-on-year, and the Internet penetration rate grew by 2.7 percentage points to 86.5%. The Internet penetration rate for the population aged 45-54 reached 95.5%, up by 6.9 percentage points year-on-year. Meanwhile, 69.0% of the population aged 55 and above used the Internet, up by 5.3 percentage points. As regards frequency of using the Internet, 93.5% of the Internet users used the Internet daily, an increase of 1.8 percentage points.
With respect to the purpose of using the Internet, most of the users used the Internet for Communication (96.1%) and Online Entertainment (85.7%), with the respective proportions rising by 1.7 and 3.8 percentage points year-on-year. The proportions of users using the Internet for Reading or Downloading Newspapers, Magazines etc. (54.8%) grew by 8.8 percentage points. Number of online shoppers increased by 30.0% to 123,900. In the fourth quarter of 2019, median online shopping spending stayed the same year-on-year at MOP1,000. Median spending on Electronic Products dropped by 23.1% to MOP1,000 whereas that on Clothing & Footwear, Handbags, etc. remained unchanged (MOP1,000). Meanwhile, median spending on Travel Services rose by 12.5% to MOP4,500.
Mobile phone users totalled 594,000, up by 2.9% year-on-year, and the mobile phone penetration rate grew by 1.0 percentage point to 92.7%. Moreover, the proportion of Internet users using mobile phones to access the Internet (94.5%) rose by 1.3 percentage points.
With an increase of 10.2% in the number of households having tablets (93,900), the proportion of households having computer equipment rose by 2.0 percentage points year-on-year to 75.6%, with 149,300 households. The computer penetration rate for the population aged 3 and above went up by 0.8 percentage points to 51.8%.
Survey on Information Technology Usage in the Household Sector for 2019 was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2019 through a supplementary questionnaire of the Employment Survey, to collect data on information technology usage among the population aged 3 and above.