We Are Social and Hootsuite have released their joint annual global digital overview report for 2020, detailing global statistics for digital, mobile, and social media use.
According to the latest report, the number of people around the world using the internet has grown to 4.54 billion, an increase of seven percent compared to January 2019. Social media use has grown to 3.80 billion, while more than 5.19 billion people around the world now use mobile phones.
Laos
According to the report, 79% of the population in Laos now has a mobile phone, with internet penetration standing at 43% of the population. Unsurprisingly, social media use in Laos directly correlates with the rate of internet penetration, also standing at 43%.
Internet speeds average 25.54 Mbps in Laos, with a year-on-year increase in the speed of fixed internet connections by 68%.
While the Lao population is said to have increased by 1.5% year on year, the number of mobile phone connections have increased by 1.3% between 2019 and 2020, while the number of internet users has increased by 6.5%, and the number of active social media users increased by twelve percent.
Web traffic in Laos is dominated by mobile phones, at 56.4%, while 42.2% of web traffic was downloaded to laptops and desktops, with only 1.5% being accessed by tablet computers. No data was provided for other devices such as video game consoles.
Interestingly, under the report’s mobile internet reference, the share of social media users accessing via mobile phones was 100%.
Social Media Use
According to the report, the total number of active social media users in Laos was 3.10 million, or 43% of the total population. The number of users increased by 12% between 2019 and 2020, with 100% of users accessing social media by mobile phones.
Facebook‘s advertising purportedly reaches 56% of the population, rising by 7.4% in the last quarter. The platform was accessed via mobile phone by 99.6% of the population, with only 0.4% of the population accessing the social media platform by desktop or laptop computer. 6.3% of users accessed Facebook via both phones and computers, with 93.3% accessing Facebook via mobile phone only.
Female users make up 46% of Facebook accounts in Laos, while male users make up 53.6%.
Instagram sees less popularity than Facebook in Laos, with only 200,000 accounts reachable by adverts on Instagram, equal to only 3.8% of the Lao population, with 64% of users being female.
Twitter follows Instagram with only 167,000 accounts reachable by adverts, making up only 3.2% of the Lao population, 63% of which are female.
According to the report, there are 110,000 Linked-in accounts based in Laos, making up only 2.5% of the country’s population. 44% of these are female, and 56% are male.
Mobile Phone Use
According to the report, Laos has some 5.68 million mobile phone connections, with 96% of connections under a pre-paid model. Of these, 66% of mobile connections are broadband (3G – 5G).
Laos scores 43.93 out of 100 points under the GSMA Mobile Connectivity Index, which measures the performance of 165 countries against key enablers and drivers of mobile internet adoption, including mobile network infrastructure, affordability of devices and services, and ability of relevant content and services.
Android enjoys the largest share of web traffic from a mobile device at 71.9%, while Apple IOS devices see a 27% share of web traffic in Laos.
