| Taiwan's Internet Users 2008 |
|
| (000)
| % of users
|
| Sex |
|
|
| Male | 5,341 | 53.30% |
| Female | 4,672 | 45.70% |
| Age |
|
|
| 12-19 | 2,339 | 23.40% |
| 20-29 | 3,194 | 31.90% |
| 30-39 | 2,428 | 24.30% |
Ten Years of Internet in Taiwan
With 14.47 million broadband subscribers in Taiwan the internet population is both one of the larges and youngest in the world. 96.95% of them are 16 to 20 years old; 90% are between the age of 12 and 35; those above 56 only account for 17.89% of users. In Febuary 2009 Taiwan also had 11.2 million unique online visitors. On average they each spent 974.4 minutes online that month for an average number of 32.1 visits per person.
(
(source: COMSCORE)
User Behavior
| Taiwan's Top 10 Sites |
|
|
| Site | (000) | % Reach | Total Min. |
| YAHOO! | 9,248 | 82.60% | 2,985 |
| MICROSOFT | 6,539 | 58.40% | 19,700 |
| GOOGLE | 6,288 | 56.20% | 446 |
| PCHOME | 3,729 | 33.30% | 82 |
| CHUNGHWA | 3,365 | 30.10% | 81 |
| YAM.COM | 3,047 | 27.20% | 74 |
| XUITE.NET | 2,520 | 22.50% | 25 |
| PIXNET.NET | 2,387 | 21.30% | 19 |
| MYFOXY.NET | 2,235 | 20.00% | 15 |
| SINA | 2,156 | 19.30% | 44 |
Taiwans online market is dominated by social media use. Blogging has become one of these dominant online activities with 86.6% of people have read a blog, and 70.9% have created a blog themselves. Taiwan is also a “a nation of active social networks”. It is estimated that there are 12.32 million social media users in the country, and of these users, 63.1% are maintaining their own networking site.
Island Wide Broadband Connectivity
Thanks to Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest telecommunication company, a partially government owned corporation, Taiwan can claim tobe the first country in the world to have installed broadband infrastructure island-wide. They bridged the digital divide between urban and rural areasafter undertaking their Optical Era Project, an investment of approximately US$1.8 billion to construct an island-wide fibre optic network that would connect five rural communitieswith the rest of the network over five years. By 2010 it aims to provide fibre access to 2.4 million residential and business subscribers from 700,000 going into2009.
Taiwan Internet, broadband and telecoms statistics – 2004 - 2008
| Sector | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 |
| Internet (million) |
| Internet users | 12.2 | 13.2 | 14.5 | 15.4 | 15.8 |
| Internet subscribers | 8.0 | 7.3 | 7.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 |
| Mobile Internet subscribers | 5.3 | 8.1 | 9.1 | 11.8 | 13.0 |
| - as % of all mobile subscribers | 23.5% | 36.4% | 39.4% | 48.8% | 51.4% |
| Broadband (million) |
| Total subscribers | 3.7 | 4.2 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.7 |
| Penetration rate | 16.3% | 18.5% | 19.7% | 20.2% | 20.3% |
| Proportion of Internet subscribers | 46.0% | 58.0% | 61.0% | 62.0% | 68.0% |
| DSL subscribers | 3.1 | 3.6 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.3 |
| Subscribers to Telecoms Services (million) |
| Fixed-line telephone subscribers | 13.5 | 13.6 | 13.4 | 13.3 | 13.1 |
| Mobile phone subscribers | 22.7 | 22.1 | 23.2 | 24.2 | 25.3 |
| - 3G subscribers | 0.5 | 0.9 | 1.8 | 3.5 | 5.0 |
| - 3G market share | 2.1% | 4.2% | 7.9% | 14.4% | 19.8% |
(Source: OGILVY and OGILYONE)
Expansion Overseas
Changhwa Telecom has also gone ahead with a US$30 million “Internet data joint venture” with Vietnam’s military-run celco Viettel as part of its overseas expansion efforts. The companies goal is to have 20% of total revenues come from overseas efforts by the year 2013. In total the organization will be investing US$3.9 billion in the next five years. As the leader in the Taiwan market it is also preparing plans to enter the China market once the legal barriers with the mainland have been dropped.
 |
Computers: 57.5 per 100 inhabitants |
| Internet users: 65.7 per 100 inhabitants |
| Telephone lines: 62.0 per 100 inhabitants |
Taiwan and Web 2.0
Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd, Taiwan's state-controlled telecom company plans to invest NT$100 billion (US$3.1 billion) over the next five years to upgrade its network and further develop applications and services based on Web 2.0. Half of the money will be spent on infrastructure, and the other half will be directed towards developing services and applications on the network designed around the idea of Web 2.0. The main aim is to transform Taiwan into a world Internet leader and turn the entire island into a wireless Internet zone with plans to continue building on existing Web 2.0 projects.
Taiwan's "Silicon Valley"
Hsinchu Science Park, an industrial park located south of Taipei, Taiwan, is where engineers and executives figure out how tomanufacture a huge portion of the world's chips, notebooks, printers, scanners, LCD TVs, and other equipment. Residents include chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and United Microelectronics, consumer electronics specialist Hon Hai, notebooks maker Quanta, and display maker AU Optotronics. Nearly 120,000 people work there. Revenue from the industrial park in the first eight months of 2007 commanded NT$737.3 billion, according to the Taipei Times.
Sources:
1.
2008 Asia Telecoms Mobile and Broadband in Taiwan3.Business booming at nation's science parks