11 December 2017 09:52 am
Use of laptops appears to be making a comeback, especially in the urban areas of Sri Lanka, according to data released by the Census and Statistics Department, despite the increasing popularity of mobile phones.
During the computer literacy survey conducted for the first half of 2017, the number of households which owned a desktop or a laptop increased to 23.5 percent, up from 22.5 percent year-on-year (YoY).
Considering the fact that the number of desktops owned fell during this period from 13.1 percent to 12.5 percent, this denotes a considerable increase in the number of laptops owned by a household.
The effect was most visible in the urban areas, while in a breakdown of provinces, laptops were becoming popular mostly in the densely populated Western Province, while increased laptop ownership was also seen in the Northern and North Central Provinces.
Historically, while the number of desktops which were owned by households hit a peak in 2014, and showed a steady decline since, the overall ownership of personal computers has hovered at or below a quarter of the total households in Sri Lanka, due to fluctuations of owning laptops.
This appears to go against the opinion of experts who last year noted that due to the increasing popularity of tablets and smart phones, the number of people using personal computers might decline.
According to the Finance Ministry, during the first half of this year, there were 28.1 million mobile phones in operation, compared to 24.7 million YoY.
Although only a smaller portion of these mobile phones were smart phones, 56.9 percent of the individuals between the ages of 5-69 were using the internet connected through smart phones. While 38.1 percent of the individuals were using laptops or desktops, just 2.1 percent used tablets to connect to the internet.
However, tablets were highly popular among the age group of 5-9 year olds, in which 8.7 percent used the tablets mainly to browse the web. Interestingly, one in five of this young demographic were digitally literate; using devices such as smart phones, tablets and personal computers on their own.
Overall, 28.3 percent of Sri Lankans were computer literate during the first half of this year, compared to 27.5 percent YoY. The number of Sri Lankans who had digital literacy was 38.7 percent, although there was no data to compare to, given that this is the first year the survey is taking mobile phone and tablet usage
into account.
The statistics indicated that this year, males had greater computer and digital literacy, both of which were also more prevalent in Generation X-ers
and millennials