Less than half of Flemish households have a desktop computer

The number of Flemish households with a desktop computer has fallen to 44 percent. This has been announced by research agency IMEC. The market share of laptops remains stable in the Flemish survey.

The use of most devices has changed little compared to 2015, according to figures published by IMEC on its website. Smartphone use has increased from 68.5 to 73.9 percent, while the number of people with dumbphones has fallen from 47 to 35.8 percent. Around 52.6 percent of smartphones in Flanders run on Android, 37 percent on iOS and the market share of Windows Phone has fallen from 8 to 5.2 percent. The rest of the users don’t know what’s running on their phone or use a different system.

After feature phones, the strongest decline has been in the use of desktop computers. Where in 2015, 51.1 percent of Flemish people had access to a desktop, in 2016 this fell to 44.2 percent. In total, 90.7 percent have a laptop or desktop at home, 34.4 percent of these people have both.

Half of users who don’t have a computer at home say it’s because they don’t have the skills to use it. A quarter say they simply have no interest in computers. The rest give various other reasons, such as using computers elsewhere or computing with another device, such as a tablet. At 91.4 percent, the number of Flemish people with an internet connection at home is close to the number of people with a computer. The reasons for not having an internet connection are also broadly similar.

The use of wearables has increased significantly, from 7.6 percent in 2015 to 13.2 percent in 2016. The majority of these are smart sports watches. Six percent of all Flemish people have one. Simple watches with activity sensors are used by 4.4 percent and smartwatches can be found at 3.8 percent of all Flemish people.