The Communications Market Report: International

The UK and Spain lead the way on digital TV take-up (91 per cent of homes)

The UK had the second highest number of homes with pay TV DVRs (such as Sky+ and V+) at the end of 2009 with 7.8 million devices, up by 40 per cent on 2008.

Although the UK leads the world in the take-up of HD ready TV sets (59 per cent of households), take-up of HDTV services is lower than in other countries where more high definition channels are available.

Just under a quarter of UK consumers (24 per cent) watch TV on the internet each week more than in any other country surveyed. People in the USA were the second most likely to watch TV on the internet (22 per cent) on a weekly basis.

US TV viewers watched more TV than in any other country with 280 minutes per day, followed by Polish TV viewers with 240 minutes and Italians with 238 minutes.

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Digital radio take-up in the UK was the highest among the countries Ofcom surveyed with almost a third (31 per cent) claiming to own and use a digital radio.

Digital radio take-up was lowest in Japan (3 per cent) and the USA (7 per cent).

Ownership and use of personal media players (such as MP3/MP4 and iPods) was highest in Italy, with nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of people and was also high in the UK with just over half (52 per cent) of people claiming to own and use such a device.

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Across most countries, the desktop PC is still the most popular device used to access the internet at home, followed by the laptop.

But in the UK the opposite is true with laptops being the most popular device used to access the internet at home, used by 69 per cent of internet users.

Mobile internet is also popular with people in the UK with 29 per cent of internet users saying they use their mobile to access the internet at home, second only to those in Japan at 43 per cent.

Fourteen per cent of UK and US consumers also use their games consoles to access the internet, compared with 7 per cent of internet users in Germany.

Italy has the highest percentage of adults who use the internet for social networking at 63.4 per cent, closely followed by the UK and USA at 63.2 per cent.

The UK is behind other countries in take-up of VoIP services with only 5 subscribers for every 100 people, compared with 26 in France and 20 in the Netherlands.

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Italy has the highest take-up of smartphones with 26 subscribers for every 100 people, followed by Spain (21) and the UK (18).

But the UK saw the highest growth in smartphone take-up in the past year with a 70 per cent rise in subscriber numbers between January 2009 and January 2010.

Germany has the highest landline take-up with 85 per cent of the population having a landline (84 per cent in the UK), while Italy has the highest mobile take-up with 95 per cent of the population owning a mobile phone (91 per cent in the UK).

The UK is second biggest text messaging nation in Europe after Ireland, with 140 messages per person per month (218 per person per month in Ireland).

People in the UK are using their mobile phones for social networking more than in other countries.

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