Global Media Intelligence 2021: Egypt

Noteworthy in 2021

PC penetration continues to fall, while levels of tablet and smartphone ownership appear to have stabilized.

• Desktop/laptop ownership in Egypt dropped by 10 percentage points between 2019 and 2020, and by an even greater margin this year, to 50.7% of internet users ages 16 to 64. By contrast, tablet penetration remained virtually identical year over year (YoY), at 23.3%. Ownership of both devices remained higher among more affluent internet users and those living in cities.
• Smartphones clearly dominate the device landscape. Fully 94.3% of internet users polled in H1 2021 owned a smartphone. Egypt is one of the few countries where many respondents still own feature phones, too; that share was virtually unchanged this year at 14.8%.
• Mobile devices accounted for an estimated 4 hours, 10 minutes (4:10) daily, 13 minutes more than last year. The average time spent with PCs and tablets each day rose 24 minutes during the same period, to 3:39.
• While PC ownership is waning somewhat, smart TVs are still gaining fans. Some 30.7% of respondents owned a smart TV in H1 2021—an increase of 6 percentage points compared with 2020. But as in previous years, web-enabled TVs were more popular among females than males, and penetration was especially high among internet users in more affluent households (45.4%).
• Several other advanced devices are picking up momentum after a sluggish start. In H1 2020, just 5.0% of internet users had a smart wristband, and 6.6% owned a smartwatch. By H1 2021, those shares had risen to 8.9% and 12.6%, respectively. Penetration of smart appliances and other smart home products also grew, but modestly, to 7.6%.