Fifty Percent HK Households Have PCsSome 1,051,100 households, or 50 percent of all households in Hong Kong, have personal computers (PCs) at home, a survey released Wednesday by the Censusand Statistics Department shows.Among those households with PCs at home, some 770,200 have their PCs connected to the Internet, representing 36 percent of all households in Hong Kong, according to the survey entitled "Household Survey on Information Technology Usage and Penetration." Some 2,639,700 persons aged 10 and over, or 43 percent of all persons in that age group, had used PC in the twelve months before the survey, which was conducted from January to March 2000. Some 1,855,200 persons aged 10 and over, or 30 percent of all persons in that age group, had used Internet service in the twelve months before the survey. About 30 percent of all persons aged 10 and over had knowledge of using Chinese input methods. The survey also indicates the high utilization of electronic business services among Hong Kong people. It says that about 85 percent of all persons aged 15 and over had used electronic business services of one form or another for personal matters in the twelve months before the survey. The electronic business services covered in the household survey included the use of Octopus card, Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), e-cash, Easy Pay System (EPS), Payment by Phone Service (PPS), phone banking services, customer services provided by the interactive voice response system, and so on. Home-made PCs Claim 80% of Domestic MarketChina sold 175 billion yuan-worth (about 21 billion US dollars) of personal computers last year, with home-made models taking an 80 percent share of the total, according to the figure from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) in last May.China's PC market has grown rapidly in the past ten years, with the annual growth rate between 1992-1997 at above 40 percent, slowing down to 20 percent in the past two years. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |