Substantial growth mobile Internet usage
- Half of people accessing the Internet use mobile devices
- Twice as many people online with mobile phones
- Social networks popular among Internet users
- Marginal increase e-shoppers
In the spring of 2011, there were over six million mobile Internet users in the age category 12–75 in the Netherlands, exactly half of all 12 to 75-year-olds who indicated they used the Internet in the three months prior to the survey. The percentage of mobile Internet users has increased considerably in recent years, in particular in 2010. Last year, 36 percent of people online used mobile devices to access the Internet. Altogether, 12.2 million people in the Netherlands accessed the Internet last year, i.e. 93 percent of the surveyed population.
The increase in mobile Internet users is predominantly due to the introduction of the smart phone. This year, 43 percent of Internet users reported to use their mobile phones to access the Internet, twice as many as last year (21 percent). More than 20 percent of people used laptops, roughly the same percentage as last year, but one and a half times as many as in 2007 (13 percent).
A total of 53 percent of Internet users reported they had been active on social networking sites like Hyves, Facebook or Twitter in the previous three months; 88 percent of them were under the age of 25. Additionally, one in five Internet users are active on the business-related social networking site LinkedIn.
Nearly 80 percent of Internet users purchased goods online in 2011. The number of e-shoppers is marginally higher than one year previously, but the annual increase over the past two years is below the average level since 2002.
The survey found that 72 percent of Internet users who purchased goods online in the preceding three months, the so-called frequent e-shoppers, exclusively bought new goods and 4 percent only bought second-hand goods. Almost a quarter did both. In 93 percent of cases, online shoppers buy goods from Dutch companies and individuals. Nearly one in five Internet users occasionally order goods in other countries of the European Union and more than one in ten purchase products in other parts of the world.