The number of Internet users nationwide reached 14.76 million last year, an increase of 1.7 percent over the previous year, the Institute for Information Industry (III) said yesterday.
The institute based its estimate on a survey it conducted last August that found that 64.4 percent of Taiwan's population had access to the Internet, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous year.
Internet use is more common among residents in the north of the country than in other parts, the institute said.
Sixty-six percent of survey respondents in northern Taiwan said they use the Internet. In Taipei City, the figure jumped to 73.6 percent of residents, the institute said.
The majority, or 88.2 percent of users, said they usually surf the Internet at home, while 33.7 percent of users said they use the Web at the office, and 25.5 percent at schools, universities or research centers.
Less than 16 percent of the respondents said they used the Internet at cafes and other public places with Internet access.
Respondents who surf the Internet at home used the Web an average of 21.8 days per month, surfing on average 16 hours per week.
Forty-three percent of home Internet users were classified as "heavy users" who use the Web more than two hours per day, while 31.9 percent were "light users," online no more than one hour per day.
The survey, carried out between Aug. 4 and Aug. 23, was one part of a project to research trends in the use of broadband, mobile and wireless services last year.
A total of 2,751 households responded to the survey.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS