Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that the number of households using the Internet in 2017 increased by 1,200 year-on-year to 168,800, accounting for 88.1% of the total households. Households using fibre optic broadband connection kept rising, up by 35.7% year-on-year to 105,700, which made up 62.6% of the total households using the Internet, and thus led to a decline of 30.8% in the number of households using fixed broadband connection (49,300).
Internet users aged 3 and above totalled 513,600, up by 2.7% year-on-year; the Internet penetration rate grew by 1.6 percentage points to 83.2%. The Internet penetration rate for the population aged 35-44 and 25-34 reached 97.6% and 97.4% respectively, up by 1.3 and 0.3 percentage points year-on-year. In addition, over 60% of the population aged 55 and above used the Internet (60.6%), an increase of 9.8 percentage points. As regards frequency of using the Internet, 94.4% of the Internet users were daily Internet users, up by 5.6 percentage points year-on-year.
Regarding purpose of using the Internet, most of the Internet users used the Internet for Communication (93.7%) and Online Entertainment (81.4%), up by 2.2 and 4.8 percentage points respectively year-on-year. The proportion for Searching for Information (53.2%) decreased by 8.1 percentage points; meanwhile, online shoppers rose by 16.0% to 87,900. Median spending on online shopping in the fourth quarter of 2017 held stable year-on-year, at MOP 1,000, in which median spending on Travel Services increased by 15.0% to MOP 5,750, spending on Clothing & Footwear, Handbags, etc. remained unchanged, while that on Electronic Products dropped by 9.1% to MOP 1,000.
Mobile phone users edged down by 0.1% year-on-year to 561,000; the mobile phone penetration rate was 90.9%, down by 0.8 percentage points. The proportion of Internet users using mobile phone to access the Internet (91.5%) decreased by 0.4 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 2.1 percentage points year-on-year to 75.8%, with 145,100 households. The computer penetration rate for the population aged 3 and above decreased by 1.7 percentage points to 52.8%.
Survey on Information Technology Usage in the Household Sector for 2017 was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2017 through a supplementary questionnaire of the Employment Survey, to collect data on information technology usage among population aged 3 and above.