Austria’s internet users reflect a slightly conservative, affluent skew in the population at large. Most were long ago able to afford PCs (and to upgrade those devices), displaying clear implications for digital habits.
Desktop/laptop ownership in Austria dropped below 90% in H1 2019 but remained notable at 88.8%—one of the highest percentages recorded worldwide by GlobalWebIndex. Internet users across all age groups and income levels owned PCs, though the highest level of ownership, by a small margin, was among those ages 55 to 64 (92.0%). More than half (54.0%) of respondents ages 16 to 64 polled this year also owned a tablet, a higher proportion than in 2018.
In H1 2018, the average time spent per day with PCs and tablets was 3 hours, 13 minutes (3:13); in H1 2019, that value had declined only marginally, to 3:11. In contrast, average time spent with broadcast TV was more than an hour shorter, at 1:53. That gap is partly the result of younger individuals increasingly moving to time-shifted and digital alternatives, including PC viewing of TV and video content. In H1 2019, 79.0% of respondents ages 16 to 24 said they had watched TV in the prior month, compared with 91.6% of those 55 to 64.
Conversely, usage of video-on-demand (VOD) services soared among younger web users. Fully, 92.9% of those ages 16 to 24 had watched content via such options in the month prior to polling in H1 2019, but that share fell by several percentage points with each decade of age. Some 72.4% of respondents ages 45 to 54 had viewed VOD content in the previous month; in the 55-to-64 age bracket, that share was 62.3%.
Smartphone ownership in Austria climbed to 95.9% in H1 2019, from 94.5% a year prior. Yet the average time spent per day with mobile activities was a full hour less than PC/tablet time (2:11 vs. 3:11).
