Welsh consumers at forefront of the gadget revolution

Wales is a nation of fast adopters when it comes to new gadgets such as smartphones and e-readers, according to Ofcom research published today.

Around two-fifths (39%) of Welsh adults are now smartphone users, up from only a quarter (25%) in 2011. Younger age groups (16-24s and 25-34s) and more affluent households are most likely to own the devices.

At the same time, there has been a 56% jump during the past year in the number of people in Wales using their mobile phones to access the internet.

Ofcom's Communications Market Report 2012 also reveals that Wales has the highest adoption of e-readers in the UK. More than one in eight (13%) adults in Wales had an e-reader in the first quarter of 2012, compared with the UK average of 10%.

E-readers look to be having a positive impact on the amount people read, with 41% of UK owners claiming to read more since buying the gadget.

Broadband take-up stable

During the course of 2011, total broadband take-up in Wales remained stable at 68%, but differences by area and demographic still exist. Fixed broadband take-up is lower among older households and homes in less affluent areas. For example, around 63% of adults in the South Wales Valleys have fixed home broadband, compared to 78% of adults in Cardiff.

Elinor Williams, Ofcom's Director for Wales, said: "It is encouraging to see that last year's rise in broadband take-up in Wales has been sustained and that Welsh consumers are continuing to take advantage of the communications services which are available to them.

"This year's report shows that more and more consumers are using social networking and accessing the internet on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, a trend which appears set to continue with the future introduction of 4G services.

"As the UK enters a new generation of mobile communications, Ofcom's objective is to promote effective competition and to stimulate both investment and innovation - helping to serve many areas of the UK that have traditionally been underserved."

Ian Clarke, Chairman of Ofcom's Advisory Committee for Wales (ACW), said: "The ACW specifically asked Ofcom to undertake a study on broadband adoption in the South Wales Valleys after previous reports had identified them as areas of low broadband take-up. As expected, demographic differences go some way to explaining the low fixed broadband take-up in the Valleys.

"One of the ACW's strategic priorities for the forthcoming year will be to ensure that Ofcom continues to understand the differing needs of Wales through its programmatic work and works to understand why the availability of communications services varies by network and location and how access and inclusion can be improved."

Key findings for Wales

Communications services during the economic downturn

• Two in three (66%) adults in Wales say they would spend less on a communications service if they were forced to make cuts in spending, compared to around half of UK adults (52%).
• More people in Wales would cut back on pay TV. When forced to choose which communications service they would cut back on, people in Wales are more likely to select pay-TV services (28%) compared to UK adults overall (16%).
• Four in ten (41%) people in Wales say they will shop around for communications services in the next 12 months, which is higher than the UK average of 36%. They are most likely to shop around for broadband services (25%), which is in line with the UK average (23%).

TV and audio-visual content

• Spend by the BBC and ITV1 on first-run originated TV programming for viewers in Wales was up 3% on 2010, the only year-on-year increase among the four nations. However, the five-year trend shows a decline of 24%.
• Use of satellite TV remains higher in Wales than in England and Scotland and is comparable with Northern Ireland. The rise in the proportion of homes in Wales using satellite for their main TV set, noted last year, has been sustained; and stands at 53% (compared to 41% in the UK).
• Adults in Wales are more likely to state TV as their 'main source' of local news. In 2011, 71% of adults in Wales stated TV as their main source of local news, higher than the UK average of 53% and the highest of all the nations.
• S4C had a year-on-year reduction in spend but an increase in the number of first-run originated hours. All genre categories saw year-on-year decreases in spending on first-run originated S4C programming, and overall there was an 8% fall in nominal terms on 2010.

Radio and audio content

• Adults in Wales listened to the most radio per week in 2011. Average weekly radio listening among adults in Wales in 2011 stood at 23.2 hours, the highest across all of the UK nations.
• Adults in Wales are less likely to listen to commercial radio. Local and national commercial stations accounted for 38% of listening share, the lowest of all the UK nations and five percentage points lower than the UK average.

Internet and web-based content

• The increase in household take-up of fixed broadband services in Wales between 2010 and 2011 was sustained in Q1 2012, but take-up is still lower than the UK average. The proportion of households with a fixed broadband connection was 63% in Wales in Q1 2012, nine percentage points lower than the UK average of 72%.
• Eight per cent of households in Wales own a tablet computer, an increase of six percentage points since Q1 2011. Take-up is higher in urban (9%) than in rural areas (4%).
• Wales has the highest adoption of e-readers in the UK. Just over one in eight  (13%) adults in Wales had an e-reader in Q1 2012, greater than the UK average of 10%.

Broadband take-up in the South Wales Valleys

• Over the last year, overall broadband take-up (fixed and mobile) in Wales has remained stable at 68%[1], but there remain significant differences by area and demographic group.
• Around six in ten (63%) adults in the South Wales Valleys have fixed broadband, which is lower than in Cardiff (78%), Newport (68%) and the Great Britain (GB) average (76%)[2].
• The demographic profile of the South Wales Valleys explains in part the lower fixed broadband take-up. However, a comparison of broadband take-up by age and socio-economic group against the GB average shows that demographic differences do not fully explain the lower take-up in the South Wales Valleys.

Telecoms and networks

• Wales had the lowest household availability of superfast broadband services across the UK nations in March 2012, at 34%. This was because household cable broadband availability (23%) was the lowest among the UK nations and fibre-to-the-cabinet availability (17%) the second lowest after Scotland.
• Thirty-nine per cent of adults in Wales said that they accessed the internet using a mobile handset in Q1 2012. This was 14 percentage points higher than the proportion a year previously, and was in line with the UK average. Smartphone take-up increased by 13 percentage points to 39% of mobile users over the period.
• Homes in Wales were more likely than average to rely solely on mobile telephony in Q1 2012. Twenty per cent of homes in Wales were mobile-only during the period, five percentage points higher than the UK average of 15%.
• Satisfaction with mobile reception was lower in rural areas of Wales than in urban areas in Q1 2012. Eighty-three per cent of mobile users in rural areas of Wales were satisfied with their mobile reception during the period, seven percentage points lower than the 90% figure in urban areas.

Post

• More consumers in Wales claim to send post regularly compared to all other UK nations. Sixty nine per cent of consumers claim to send items of post regularly; this is significantly higher than the UK average of 58%.
• Adults in Wales receive fewer parcels than the UK average. Our research shows that adults in Wales receive an average of 0.7 parcels per month, lower than the UK average of 1.2 parcels per month (although this is within the survey error margins).
• Almost half of consumers in Wales say they use First Class all the time. This is despite the fact that only a minority say their mail has to arrive the next day, with 14% saying that all of their mail needs to arrive next day and 19% saying that most of it does.
• Compared to the UK average, fewer adults in Wales prefer to send emails rather than letters. A quarter (27%) of adults in Wales say  they prefer to send e-mails rather than letters whenever possible, which is a lower national proportion than  across the UK (38%).

The Communications Market Report for Wales can be found here: www.ofcom.org.uk/cmrwales

Highlights from the UK report

UK is now texting more than talking

• Text-based communications are surpassing traditional phone calls or meeting face to face as the most frequent ways of keeping in touch for UK adults.
• The findings were revealed when adults were asked what methods were used at least once a day to communicate with friends and family.
• The average UK consumer now sends 50 texts per week – which has more doubled in four years – with over 150 billion text messages sent in 2011. Almost another ninety minutes per week is spent accessing social networking sites and e-mail, or using a mobile to access the internet, while for the first time ever fewer phone calls are being made on both fixed and mobile phones.
• Teenagers and young adults are leading these changes, increasingly socialising with friends and family online and through text messages despite saying they prefer to talk face to face.
• According to Ofcom's Communications Market Report 2012, 96% of 16-24s are using some form of text based application on a daily basis to communicate with friends and family; with 90% using texts and nearly three quarters (73%) using social networking sites.
• By comparison, talking on the phone is less popular among this younger age group, with 67% making mobile phone calls on a daily basis, and only 63% talking face to face.

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. Ofcom's Communications Market Report provides an overview of communications services across Wales and monitors key trends in the availability and take-up of digital services across the nation. This year's report also explores the impact of the economic downturn on consumer attitudes towards spending on communications services and, for the first time since Ofcom took over responsibility for regulating postal services from Postcomm, we examine Welsh consumers' use of postal services.
2. Face-to-face surveys were conducted with 3,772 respondents aged 16+ in the UK, with 513 interviews conducted in Wales. Quotas were set and weighting applied to ensure that the sample was representative of the population of Wales in terms of age, gender, socio-economic group and geographic location. (Fieldwork took place in January and February 2012.)
3. Note the survey sample in Wales has error margins of approximately +/- 3-4% at the 95% confidence level. In urban and rural Wales, survey error margins are approximately +/-4-6%.
4. Respondents were defined as urban if they lived in a settlement with a population of 2000 or more and rural if they lived in areas with smaller populations.
5. In addition to the survey data, this report refers to data from a range of other sources, including data provided to Ofcom by stakeholders.

[1] Ofcom technology tracker, Q1, 2012.

[2] As reported by the British Population Survey January to September 2011.