Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that number of households using the Internet in 2020 increased by 1,200 year-on-year to 183,500, accounting for 91.9% of the total households. Number of households using fibre optic broadband connection continued to rise, up by 6.5% year-on-year to 147,800, taking up 80.5% of the total households using the Internet. The proportion of households using mobile broadband to access the Internet (179,800) grew by 0.1 percentage point year-on-year to 98.0%, which indicated a growing prevalence of mobile broadband usage among households.
Internet users totalled 566,300, an increase of 2.2% year-on-year, and the Internet penetration rate rose by 1.0 percentage point to 87.5%. The Internet penetration rate for the population aged 15-24 stood at 99.3%, up by 0.1 percentage point year-on-year. Meanwhile, 73.2% of the population aged 55 and above used the Internet, representing a 4.2 percentage point growth. As regards frequency of using the Internet, 93.6% of the Internet users used the Internet daily, up by 0.1 percentage point.
With respect to the purpose of using the Internet, most of the users used the Internet for Communication (95.9%) and Online Entertainment (83.9%), albeit year-on-year decreases of 0.2 and 1.8 percentage points in the respective shares; on the other hand, the proportion for E-banking (51.0%) grew by 11.6 percentage points. Number of online shoppers increased by 17.0% to 145,000. In the fourth quarter of 2020, median online shopping spending was MOP1,000, the same as in the corresponding quarter of 2019. Median spending on Electronic Products (MOP1,200) went up by 20.0% year-on-year, whereas that on Clothing & Footwear, Handbags, etc. (MOP1,000) remained unchanged. Meanwhile, median spending on Travel Services tumbled by 55.6% to MOP2,000.
Mobile phone users totalled 606,600, up by 2.1% year-on-year, and the mobile phone penetration rate grew by 1.1 percentage points to 93.8%. Moreover, the proportion of Internet users using mobile phones to access the Internet stayed the same year-on-year, at 94.5%.
There were 144,100 households with computer equipment, which made up 72.2% of the total households, down by 3.4 percentage points year-on-year. The computer penetration rate went down by 2.9 percentage points to 48.9%.
Survey on Information Technology Usage in the Household Sector for 2020 was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2020 through a supplementary questionnaire of the Employment Survey, to collect data on information technology usage among the population aged 3 and above.