After skipping 2007, MCMC has just released its third in the series of Household Use of The Internet Survey for 2008. Besides the usual demographic and socio-economic data, it's good to see that trends of household internet users are also being sampled this time around.



Following are the selected facts and figures, especially on those not included in 2005 and 2006.

Methods of Internet Connection

Broadband usage is going to eclipse dial-up's soon. Perhaps, MCMC should segment out a new category from broadband in next release, HSDPA / narrowband or something.

1. Broadband - 73.9%
2. Dial-up - 25.0%
3. Both - 1.0%

Monthly Internet Bill

Home internet users spent on average RM64.15 a month on internet access. Can we conclude that majority of home users are connected with less than 1 Mbps?

1. RM61–RM70 - 19.0%
2. RM71–RM80 - 16.1%
3. RM81–RM90 - 12.8%

Activity on the Internet

Usage for public services, education and financial activities has increased substantially compared to 2006, but the top 3 usages are still:

1. Getting information - 94.4%
2. Communications by text - 84.7%
3. Leisure - 63.5%
* Multiple response type question

e-Government transactions and online stock trading are new entries in 2008. Together with financial activities, it seems like Malaysians are more willing to perform transactions online comparing to previous years.

Blogs

It's quite surprising that 36.5% of home users do not know what blogs are. On the other hand, 6% of home users are blogger, which is about 114,000 of them.

These are the type of blogs Malaysians visited most frequently:

1. Blogging communities and directories - 63.5%
2. Media blog - 47.2%
3. Blog search engines - 42.8%
4. Business blog - 19.6%
5. Others - 17.5%
* Multiple response type question

The categorization here does look a bit confusing as politics blogs are obviously heavily visited here, so are the lifestyle and technology ones.

Messenger Usage



It is a "messenger war" here, with Windows Messenger coming a very close second to Yahoo Messenger. ICQ, of which I remember being so popular here a decade ago along with mIRC, is almost going into extinction with only 3.2% of home users are using it.

1. Yahoo Messenger - 58.5%
2. Windows Messenger - 58.4%
3. GoogleTalk - 17.0%
* Multiple response type question