Press Release 15/05/2009

INFORMATION SOCIETY SURVEY FAMILIES -2009

25% of the Internet users in the Basque Country shopped online in 2009

Gender gap among Internet users decreases

The number of people who shopped online came to 236,600 in the first quarter of 2009, 24.9% of all Internet users, according to Eustat data. This figure means that 6,000 more people shopped online than in the previous quarter (+2.7%) and 21,000 more if we compare it to the 2nd quarter of 2008, which is an increase of nearly 10%.

The number of users in general also rose in the first quarter of 2009 and there were 950,600 Internet users aged 15 and over in the Basque Country, 51.7% of the Basque population in that age bracket. This percentage was up by 2.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.

By province, the differences in user population percentages were small. With respect to the fourth quarter of 2008, the greatest growth was in Gipuzkoa (3.2%), which means that 51.7% of the population used Internet. 51.8% of the population of Bizkaia, with an increase of 2.5%, were Internet users, while there was a slight downturn (0.5%) in Álava, with 51.2% of the population aged over 15 using Internet.

Graph 1. Evolution of the Population aged 15 and over by access to ICT equipment in the home per quarter 1999-2009. %

Source: EUSTAT

By age group, there was a notable increase among users aged 55 to 64, with a 10.6% increase with respect to the fourth quarter of 2008, followed by people aged between 45 and 54, with a 6.2% increase. There was a downturn of 5.6% in the use of the Internet among people over 64 years old, even though this age group had grown in number when compared to the second quarter of 2008 (+12.2%). The other age brackets, those between 15 and 44 years old, registered slight increases that ranged between 0.4 and 0.7%.



The so-called gender gap, which had fallen to 8.8 percentage points in the second quarter of 2008, dropped to 8.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2009, even though it did not return to the minimum of 5.6 points, that occurred in 2007.. Therefore, with respect to the population aged 15 and over, male Internet users represented 56% of the male population and female users 47.7% in the case of women. Out of all the people using Internet in the first quarter of 2009, 52.6% were men compared to 47.4% of women.

The greatest increase in the number of users was among the unemployed and inactive population

In terms of activity, 97% of the student population used Internet, while that figure dropped to 70.5% when it came to the working population and 20.4% of the unemployed and inactive population. The largest increase with respect to the fourth quarter of 2008 (18.9%) was among the unemployed and inactive population, where, on the other hand, there was a greater margin of growth.. In the case of students, the percentage of Internet users fell by 5.2% and, finally, it increased by 0.6% among the working population.

People continued to go online from home, with the number of connections increasing by 3.1%, which meant that 85.4% of the users connected from their homes. However, the greatest increase was in the number of people accessing the Internet from their work place, with a 5.3% increase. On the other hand, Internet access from educational centres and other places (Internet cafés, hotels, leisure areas,..) increased slightly, with an increase of 0.4% and 1.9%, respectively.

Significant increase in the use of English to browse online

The percentage of Internet users that browse in English has increased by 8.2%, while the number of people browsing in Basque fell by 3.2%, even though there was an increase of 14.3% when compared to the second quarter of 2008. Spanish continued to be the preferred language to browse online with an increase of 2.3%. The average duration of the online connections was 50 minutes in the first quarter of 2009, which was up by 6 minutes with respect to the fourth quarter of 2008.

The number of Basque households with access to ICT equipment continues to increase

The number of Basque households with Information and Communication Technologies equipment continued to increase. In the first quarter of 2009, 60% of the households in the Basque Country had a computer, which was 1.7% up on the fourth quarter of 2008 and 4.8% more with respect to the second quarter in the previous year.

More than a million people aged over 14 had access to the Net

With respect to Internet access, there are slightly over 428,000 families, 51.9%, which have access to this service from their homes, which, therefore, means that there were 12,500 new families (3%) with Internet connections in the fourth quarter of 2008. The number of people aged over 14 with access to the Net was up by 55,200 people from the second quarter of 2008, which means it now stands at over a million people.

Eighty-eight per cent of households had mobile phones. In terms of the population over 14, the percentage owning a mobile phone stood at 93.1%.

Table 1. Information Society Survey (ESI-Families)

*DIF. P.P.= Difference in percentage points

Source: EUSTAT

For further information:

Basque Statistics Office C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz Tlf:+34-945-01 75 00 Fax:+34-945-01 75 01 E-mail: eustat@eustat.es Contact: Pilar Martínez Rollón Tlf:+34-945-01 75 31 Fax:+34-945-01 75 01 Online press releases: www.eustat.es Databank: www.eustat.eus/bancopx/spanish/indice.asp