Hong Kong Technology

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Hong Kong: Technology Penetration

High Penetration

71.7% of households have PCs at home, of which 93.6% are connected to the Internet. Overall, 67.1% of households had access to the Internet in 2006. As of April 2007, broadband access is 73.7%. (Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong, and Office of the Telecommunications Authhority, )

Internet access through phones is still low. Only 34.8% of the population subscribes to 2.5/3 G mobile phones.

Businesses embracing IT

In 2006, 60.5% of all businesses had PCs. 99.2% of large establishments, 85.9% of medium establishments and 56.2% of small establishments were using PCs. The percentage of companies with Internet connection increased marginally to 55.9% in 2006, from 54.7% in 2005.

At 88.1%, Internet subscription was highest amongst the financing, insurance, real estate and business services sector. Percentage of businesses with their own websites/web pages increased from 15.5% in 2005 to 17.5% in 2006. However, large enterprises clearly drive the numbers with over 74.7% having websites/pages. At 37%, the number is significantly lower for medium sized enterprises and even smaller for small enterprises, of which only 13.5% are represented online. Despite the overall increase in online sites, only 8.7% of companies with websites/pages offer online services and purchasing options.

Hong Kong - Social Media and PR across Asia
Source

Few online purchases

2006 survey by C&SD found that only 8.8% of people over 15 had used one or more types of online purchasing services for personal matters. The figure is comparable to the 8.5% in 2005. (For more information see section on Cultural Issues— Environment)

Digital Divide?

According to a 2003 report by International Telecommunication Union, availability and use of PCs and the Internet is dependent on age, income and education. 93% of students above 10 and 89% of college degree holders are online. Overall, they constituted 56% of all internet users in 2002. This may have impacted the nature of online advertising, with didactic institutions taking the lead. (Figures are reported in detail under Online Advertising)

The lack of Chinese softwares, interfaces and search engines used to be a problem. However, this has been overcome largely by the launch of sites such as yahoo!HK (most popular site and search engine) and Chinese versions ofInternet Explorer, Windows and office.

According to the report, 57% of Hong Kong citizens were unable to speak English, 40% used it as a second-language and only the remaining 3% used it as their language of choice. This latter group is primarily composed of the expatriates working in the many multinationals located in Hong Kong. Amongst the local Chinese, Cantonese is the most popular dialect, while immigrants from mainland China prefer Mandarin. This preference is apparent in the top 20 sites list, with Yahoo! HK taking a clear lead.

Hong Kong: Media Landscape - Social Media and PR across Asia

Latest page update: made by steph.siow , May 27 2008, 12:01 PM EDT (about this update About This Update steph.siow Edited by steph.siow

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