Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that number of households using the Internet in 2018 increased by 6,600 year-on-year to 175,400, accounting for 90.2% of the total households. Number of households using fibre optic broadband connection continued to rise, up by 11.2% year-on-year to 117,500, taking up 67.0% of the total households using the Internet. This led to a decline of 15.6% in the number of households using fixed broadband connection (41,600).

Internet users aged 3 and above totalled 527,400, a rise of 2.7% year-on-year; the Internet penetration rate grew up by 0.6 percentage points to 83.8%. The Internet penetration rate for the population aged 15-24 reached 98.1%, up by 1.3 percentage points year-on-year. Internet use became increasingly prevalent among the population aged 3-14, with the penetration rate rising by 5.2 percentage points to 69.1%. Meanwhile, 63.7% of the population aged 55 and above used the Internet, up by 3.1 percentage points. As regards frequency of using the Internet, 91.7% of the Internet users used the Internet daily, a decrease of 2.8 percentage points.

With respect to the purpose of using the Internet, most of the users used the Internet for Communication (94.4%) and Online Entertainment (81.9%), with respective growth of 0.7 and 0.5 percentage points. The proportions of users using the Internet for Searching for Information (79.6%) and Reading or Downloading Newspapers, Magazines etc. (46.0%) grew by 26.4 and 16.9 percentage points respectively. Meanwhile, number of online shoppers increased by 8.4% to 95,300. In the fourth quarter of 2018, median online shopping spending stayed the same as a year ago, at MOP1,000. Median spending on Travel Services dropped by 30.4% to MOP4,000 whereas that on Clothing & Footwear, Handbags, etc. remained unchanged (MOP1,000). Meanwhile, median spending on Electronic Products rose by 30% to MOP1,300.

Mobile phone users totalled 577,300, up by 2.9% year-on-year, and the mobile phone penetration rate grew by 0.8 percentage points to 91.7%. In addition, the proportion of Internet users using mobile phones to access the Internet (93.2%) rose by 1.7 percentage points.

The proportion of households having computer equipment fell by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year to 73.6%, with 143,000 households. The computer penetration rate for the population aged 3 and above decreased by 1.8 percentage points to 51.0%.

Survey on Information Technology Usage in the Household Sector for 2018 was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2018 through a supplementary questionnaire of the Employment Survey, to collect data on information technology usage among the population aged 3 and above.