Hong Kong Internet Usage Stats in 2009

Yahoo! sites and instant messaging are winners, according to Comscore’s first Web report on Hong Kong.

Most visited web property: Yahoo! reigns
Last August, Yahoo! Sites are most visited by 3.92 million Hong Kong Internet users. Various Yahoo! web properties include Yahoo! Blog, the Yahoo! portal, Finance and Auctions.

This is definitely good news for Yahoo! on two fronts: a) Yahoo! still has solid fan base in the city with strong loyalty b) Hong Kong users are relatively affluent in the region, which is a very good thing when talking about turning loyalty into business.

Most popular online activity: Instant Messaging
Hong Kong people spend most of their time on instant messenger, accounting for nearly 16% of their whole time online.

“An average Hong Kong Internet user spends more than 25 hours online per month, making it one of the most engaged Internet markets globally,” said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region.”Although Hong Kong is a smaller Internet market in Asia, its highly engaged and affluent audience makes it especially valuable to advertisers and publishers.”

Top online activities in Hong Kong: Instant messengers, entertainment and social networking
Hong Kong’s instant messenger habit is way above the rest of the region. At almost 16 per cent, it’s approximately twice the share of the whole Asia-Pacific. So if an average Hong Kong Internet user spends 25 hours a month, a full four hours of it will be devoted into instant messaging. There’s just something in instant messenger that keeps communication between friends, family members and co-workers alive, and where strangers meet new friends. Unfortunately for the latter, there were criminal cases that were traced from girls and women being victimized by so-called newly found friends online.

Entertainment sites are also very popular in Hong Kong, taking nearly 11% of online time. Social networking activities account for 8 per cent of online time as users flock to popular social networking site Facebook.com. Hong Kong’s finance-focused economy also has an impact on web usage as Internet users spend close to 5 per cent of online time. This stat is more than double the region’s share of time in the category.

The table below lists down the top web properties accessed by Hong Kong Internet users. Top sites belonged to global portals such as Yahoo, MSN and Google, each of which own a portfolio of websites. Down the ladder are social networking (Facebook) and discussion sites (Uwants and Discuss) which illustrate the active participation of local users in social media. The presence of Next Media, On.CC and Television Broadcasts Limited highlights the popularity of entertainment portals while HSBC,

While certain industries are defined in specific sites, it’s also possible that there are overlapping categories between these websites.

Such piece of information from Comscore should provide a better understanding among businesses whose main target audience are the Hong Kong people.

Photo credit: mb17chung