The proliferation of smartphones and tablet computers helped communication and consumption of media to top sleep as Britain's most time consuming activity, according to the UK telecoms regulator.
Twice as many people used tablet computers in the UK last year compared with 2012, the latest data, released yesterday, shows. Smartphones are now used by 61 per cent of people.
Britons spend more time using smartphones and tablets, watching television and listening to the radio than they do sleeping, thanks to the availability of broadband in the home and on the move, the regulator, Ofcom, said.
Use of tablet computers to access the internet among adults almost doubled to 30 per cent last year from 16 per cent in 2012. In the UAE, 19 per cent own tablets – also considerably higher than the global average hovering at 12 per cent, according to the TNS Mobile Life Study in November.
The trend had pushed up global sales of tablet devices in the second quarter of this year by 11 per cent compared with a year earlier, according to IDC data this week.
But the market is becoming increasingly fragmented as Apple's share slides. Over the past quarter, Apple sold 13.3 million iPads, a drop of 9.3 per cent year on year.
Sales of China's Lenovo devices jumped 64 per cent year-on-year in the period to 2.4 million and Samsung inched up sales by 1.6 per cent. Lenovo, Apple and Samsung all saw their market shares shrink from a year earlier as a number of smaller manufacturers together grew their overall share to more than 44 per cent.
The Ofcom survey said that consuming media and communicating takes 11 hours and 7 minutes out of an average Briton’s day, a jump of more than two hours since 2010, from 8 hours and 48 minutes.
New technology was also behind work encroaching more and more into people’s personal time, with six in 10 people doing work tasks outside working hours and 10 per cent reading and sending work-related emails and texts in bed, the survey found.
On the flip side, Britons use email at work for personal reasons and one in five shop online in the office.
Many people made telephone calls and surfed the web at the same time as they watched television or listened to the radio, so the total volume of 11 hours 7 minutes is squeezed into 8 hours 41 minutes, or 20 minutes longer than they sleep, on average, Ofcom said.
Watching television remained the most popular individual activity, consuming nearly three hours of the average adult’s day, the 2014 Communications Market Report said.
Ofcom’s research also showed that the most tech-savvy people are teenagers. People reach a peak of digital understanding at 14 to 15 years, while children aged 6 show the same knowledge of new technology as the average 45-year-old, said Ofcom, which surveyed nearly 2,000 adults and 800 children.
* with Reuters
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