Households with internet access increase to 85.7% in 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Households having access to the Internet have increased by 15.6 percentage points to 85.7% in 2017 as compared to 70.1% in 2015.

In a statement here today, the Statistics Department said, households with computer and mobile phone access rose to 74.1% and 98.1% respectively compared to 67.6% and 97.9% in 2015.

Chief Statistician Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin, said individuals using Internet aged 15 years and above in Malaysia rose by nine percentage points to 80.1% in 2017 from 71.1% in 2015.

“Among the popular Internet activities carried out by the Internet users were participating in social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others (86.3%); downloading images, films, video or music; playing or downloading games (81.2%); getting information about goods and services (80.4%); and, downloading software or applications (74.5%).

“Other activities carried out by Internet users were Internet banking (37.6%), and purchasing or ordering goods or services (23.2%),” he said.

The percentage of individuals using computer also increased to 69.8% in 2017 from 68.7% in 2015, while the percentage of individuals using mobile phone rose by 0.2 percentage point in 2017 to 97.7% from 97.5% in 2015. - Bernama