Communiqué de presse

Use of information and communication technologies in French society - Findings for 2013

Paris, 10 December 2013

France's Electronic communications and postal regulatory authority (ARCEP) and the Committee for industry, energy and technologies, CGIET (Conseil général de l'industrie, de l'énergie et des technologies) have released the findings of the 11th annual survey on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in France. This survey was conducted in June 2013 through face-to-face interviews with a sample of 2,215 people who are representative of the French population, 12 years of age and over.

What follows are some of the survey's main findings.

More and more French people are equipped with digital devices, and with mobile devices in particular.

- Equipment ownership rates for portable digital devices are on the rise: for laptop computers (owned by 61% of people surveyed, +4 points), smartphones (39%, +10 points) and tablets (17%, +9 points).

- Fixed telephony equipment (91% of people surveyed, +1 point) and mobile phone ownership (89% +1 point) rates remain high, with four out of five people in France owning both.

Wi-Fi becoming the most common internet access technology used at home, while the mobile phone is the one most commonly used outside the home.

- More than eight out of 10 people in France have an internet connection at home (81%, +3 points), and virtually all of them (99% of equipped households) have a broadband connection. ADSL remains the most widely used access technology (89%).

- Wi-Fi is becoming the most common access technology in the home (used by 53% of people surveyed), followed closely by a direct landline connection to the computer (52% of people surveyed, -2 points). We are seeing a swift rise in the use of mobile devices (tablets, mobile phone) to connect to the web at home, and this regardless of whether users are employing Wi-Fi (33% of people surveyed, +10 points) or a cellular network (27%, +7 points). Ultimately, consumers are using a variety of connection modes, with half of them employing two or more to access the internet when at home.

- More than six out of 10 people go online every day using their home computer: 63% of people surveyed, or 77% of those with an internet connection at home.

- Using a portable device to connect to the internet (37% of people surveyed) is increasing even more rapidly (+9 points), while the percentage of people accessing the web using other portable devices, i.e. a tablet or a laptop computer, has increased by one point since last year, up to 21%. All in all, more than two out of five people went online when on the move in 2013 (43%).

Use of the internet spreading amongst the population, becoming increasingly ubiquitous on all platforms.

- Those surveyed report spending an average 12 hours a week online, all types of connection combined. Internet users spend an average 15 hours a week online.

- In addition to web browsing (used by 37% of people surveyed), using mobile devices to access e-mail (30%, +7 points) and download apps (29%, +8 points) are both on the rise. This is especially true amongst smartphone owners, 79% of whom use their handset to access the web, 66% to view their e-mail and 67% to download applications.

- Close to half of all those surveyed listen to or download music from the web (49%), a third of them download or watch videos (32%) and 45% have joined a social networking site.

- More than half of the people surveyed shop online (55%, +6 points). Half of those queried make use of certain e-government services (51%), and 25% have used the internet to look for a job.

- Voice over IP (VoIP) software is becoming increasingly popular on computers, mobile phones and tablets: it is used by 28% of the people surveyed.

- Twenty two percent of people surveyed watch TV on their computer, which is five points more than three years ago, whereas watching TV on a mobile is decreasing (7% of people surveyed, -1 point), especially amongst smartphone owners (17%, -7 points).

Information and communication technologies are blurring the lines between work and leisure time

- Fifty five percent of people with a job have a computer at work, and virtually the same percentage (54%) also have internet access at their place of employment.

- Half of those in the workforce who have internet access at work use it for personal purposes to some degree.

- On the flipside, 32% of people in the workforce who have their own computer use new technologies to work at home.

- Forty two percent of people with a job say that new technologies allow them to achieve a better balance between their work and private lives. On the other hand, 40% believe that ICT allow their work to spill over too much into their private lives.

The complete findings (in French) are available for download on the ARCEP website.


Linked documents

 CREDOC study 2013 (pdf - 5.67MB) (in French only - pdf) 

Press kit (pdf - 1.11MB) (in French only - pdf)