عربي

13 Quick Stats about Internet Usage in the Middle East [Stats]

Arabic

13 Quick Stats about Internet Usage in the Middle East [Stats]

During the second day at Arabnet this year, Elie Aoun, the Regional Manager of research firm Ipsos shared a few statistics that revealed the state of internet and mobile penetration in the Middle East and North Africa.

The study covered 6 Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Lebanon and Kuwait, offering information based on face-to-face interviews with more than 22,000 participants.

One startling fact that the study highlighted was that Egypt has the lowest rates when it comes to internet (26%), smartphone (5%) and electronic game penetration, and the second highest rate in social network penetration (79%) and online auction sites (35%). This data differs from Google's estimate that smartphone penetration reaches 26%, but either way, there's a huge opportunity for growth.

Here are 13 key facts from the study:

  1. Internet penetration in the Middle East and North Africa is 39%.

  2. The UAE has the highest internet penetration rate at 75%, followed by Kuwait at 64% and Qatar at 61%. Egypt has the lowest rate in the region at 26%.

  3. Jordan has the highest rate of daily news penetration across internet users at around 37%.

  4. Saudi Arabia has the highest rate of online television watching across internet users at 25%.

  5. Egypt has the lowest rates of radio (3%), TV (6%) and online newspaper (7%) penetration.

  6. Jordan has the highest penetration of social networks across internet users, at 88%, and Lebanon the lowest at 47%.

  7. 53% of e-commerce spenders in Kuwait and 49% in Lebanon used e-commerce for money transfer, while in the UAE, 54% of e-commerce users bought airline tickets, and Egypt marked an aggressive number of 35% for online auctions, versus the second highest being of 6% in Saudi Arabia.

  8. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have the highest rates of smartphone penetration at 63% and 61%, respectively, while Egypt has the lowest at 5%.

  9. Lebanon has the highest rate of mobile app downloads, with 70% of internet users having downloaded at least one app, while 40% of internet users download news and feeds. Egypt and Jordan are tied for the lowest rates of mobile app usage at 49%.

  10. Unsurprisingly, the highest usage of online streaming services is in the UAE (54%), while the lowest is in Egypt (15%); movies are generally streamed more than any other type of content.

  11. Music, games and video are the three most downloaded types of online content. In the aggregate, 63% of UAE’s internet users download these three types of content, while only 23% do so in Egypt.

  12. Jordan has the highest rate of electronic game use across its entire population, at 40%.

  13. 87% of internet users across the Middle East and North Africa access the internet from home.

Thank you

Please check your email to confirm your subscription.

Whoops, looks like something went wrong.

(1/1) ErrorException

file_put_contents(): Only 0 of 239 bytes written, possibly out of free disk space

in Filesystem.php (line 122)
at HandleExceptions->handleError(2, 'file_put_contents(): Only 0 of 239 bytes written, possibly out of free disk space', '/var/www/wamda-frontend/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Filesystem/Filesystem.php', 122, array('path' => '/var/www/wamda-frontend/storage/framework/sessions/z84iZbHySI6L0XS5ony5tyz2ULuLonSIsOB4UbAS', 'contents' => 'a:3:{s:6:"_token";s:40:"hx4ufs1n5b04waHFSkZdzNBgzjQgeFWbz4Lcseub";s:9:"_previous";a:1:{s:3:"url";s:81:"http://staging.wamda.com/2013/03/13-stats-about-internet-usage-in-the-middle-east";}s:6:"_flash";a:2:{s:3:"old";a:0:{}s:3:"new";a:0:{}}}', 'lock' => true))
at file_put_contents('/var/www/wamda-frontend/storage/framework/sessions/z84iZbHySI6L0XS5ony5tyz2ULuLonSIsOB4UbAS', 'a:3:{s:6:"_token";s:40:"hx4ufs1n5b04waHFSkZdzNBgzjQgeFWbz4Lcseub";s:9:"_previous";a:1:{s:3:"url";s:81:"http://staging.wamda.com/2013/03/13-stats-about-internet-usage-in-the-middle-east";}s:6:"_flash";a:2:{s:3:"old";a:0:{}s:3:"new";a:0:{}}}', 2)in Filesystem.php (line 122)
at Filesystem->put('/var/www/wamda-frontend/storage/framework/sessions/z84iZbHySI6L0XS5ony5tyz2ULuLonSIsOB4UbAS', 'a:3:{s:6:"_token";s:40:"hx4ufs1n5b04waHFSkZdzNBgzjQgeFWbz4Lcseub";s:9:"_previous";a:1:{s:3:"url";s:81:"http://staging.wamda.com/2013/03/13-stats-about-internet-usage-in-the-middle-east";}s:6:"_flash";a:2:{s:3:"old";a:0:{}s:3:"new";a:0:{}}}', true)in FileSessionHandler.php (line 83)
at FileSessionHandler->write('z84iZbHySI6L0XS5ony5tyz2ULuLonSIsOB4UbAS', 'a:3:{s:6:"_token";s:40:"hx4ufs1n5b04waHFSkZdzNBgzjQgeFWbz4Lcseub";s:9:"_previous";a:1:{s:3:"url";s:81:"http://staging.wamda.com/2013/03/13-stats-about-internet-usage-in-the-middle-east";}s:6:"_flash";a:2:{s:3:"old";a:0:{}s:3:"new";a:0:{}}}')in Store.php (line 128)
at Store->save()in StartSession.php (line 88)
at StartSession->terminate(object(Request), object(Response))in Kernel.php (line 218)
at Kernel->terminateMiddleware(object(Request), object(Response))in Kernel.php (line 189)
at Kernel->terminate(object(Request), object(Response))in index.php (line 58)