Line has become the favorite app for Taiwanese smartphone users among all social media platforms, a Market Intelligence Center survey showed.
The center — which is run by the government-sponsored Institute for Information Industry — said that Line has become the most-used app among smartphone owners, beating the likes of of Facebook, YouTube, WeChat and Instagram.
The survey showed that 80.9 percent of respondents use social media apps every day, 35.3 percent use mobile gaming apps at least once per day, 31.8 percent use information or life services apps every day and 30.1 percent use audio-video apps daily.
The center said that social media has become a part of the daily life of smartphone owners.
Among respondents, 40.1 percent said they spend more than 30 minutes on social media every day, while 39.4 percent of them spend 10 to 30 minutes per day on the sites, the survey found.
The results indicate that smartphone users in Taiwan have downloaded 16 apps on average, showing the growing tendency to spend time using these types of software, the center said.
The center said that smartphone owners use about six apps each day and nine per week on average.
The center said that 78.9 percent of respondents said they downloaded apps because they are helpful in areas such as online financial transactions and online shopping, while 71.9 percent simply said that they found the apps interesting.
The results showed that 34.5 percent of respondents said they downloaded apps because they help to kill time.
Based on the survey, center analyst Liu Chia-ping (劉佳苹) said that smartphones allow consumers not to be confined to a fixed venue or fixed time when using the devices.
Apps can meet consumers’ needs for a wide range of applications, such as socializing with friends, gaining access to entertainment and information, as well as shopping, Liu said.
Liu said business start-ups can also make good use of apps for marketing and to boost the visibility of their products.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the