More South Africans are logging onto the Internet than before, the SA Advertising Research Foundation (Saarf) found in its latest All Media and Products (Amps) Survey 2006 Rolling Average.
The survey, which asked respondents if they had logged on "yesterday", found over a million adults responding to the survey had logged on the day before. Some 22.6% of South Africans in the highest income brackets are accessing the Net every week, up from 20.8% last year.
Overall, respondents who accessed the Net in the past four weeks were "trending" up at 6.4% and those who sent or received e-mail was also up at 6.5%.
"Cellphone penetration has continued to rocket," Saarf says. In 1996, 30% of adults had a landline, while only 2.4% had a cellphone. In 2006, only 22.5% of adults have a home phone, while 49.4% have a cellphone. This is a significant increase over last year`s figures, with growth in both the contract and prepaid sectors.
World Wide Worx`s latest research on cellphone usage indicates that most cellphone users are in the lowest spend category. Some 45% of the market spends about R109 a month on cellphone.
"Mobility 2006: The mobile menagerie revealed" says this is about a quarter of overall spending on cellphones in SA. "This group is also the least likely to be on contract, as well as the least likely to change networks."
The Amps survey, states Saarf, contains information on 30.9 million South Africans that are 16 years or older. It was based on a sample of 24 813 people and undertaken in two studies from March to September 2005, and from January to June 2006.
Increase in wealth
It found, among other things, that South Africans are seeing a steady increase in wealth, and this is displayed in ownership of luxury items such as DSTV. Year-on-year, average household income increased 5.3% in real terms from R905 in 2005 to R998, which is up by 10.3% before factoring in inflation at 4.8%.
"On the home entertainment side, more households have HiFis and DVD players, with the incidence of VCRs declining," it said on its Web site. However, total usage of television is trending downwards, from 66.9% last year to 66.2% in this survey.
DSTV, SABC 2 and SABC 3 are seeing increased viewers, while SABC 1 and e-TV are losing viewers, it said. Radio has also grown its audience pool, with 28.633 million people listening at least once a week.
Cinema`s declining audience has been reversed and 7.1% of the respondent pool views a movie once a week.
In addition, "substantially" more people are using debit cards, up from 3.1% to 3.9%.
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