Dubai: The number of users who access the internet through mobile devices is expected to rise dramatically in the next few years, a Telecommunication Regulation Authority (TRA) official said.
Mohammad Nasser Al Ganem, Director General of the TRA, spoke at the launch of a regional white paper on Monday titled “The Arab World online: Changing Internet Usage Trends in the Arab Region”, which was conducted by Dubai School of Government (DSG) in partnership with Bayt.com.
The report focuses on the use of e-government, consumption habits, e-learning, the use of social media, as well as mobile technologies and public attitudes toward online communication.
“I have looked at the figures and, for example ‘accessing the internet’ and I have seen that smartphones and ipads are less than laptops and PCs. This is going to change, they are going to be number one in a few years, it will not last for more than three years — it will be less than that.”
He said that with technology developing, tablets and mobile devices will be the number one device for accessing the internet, not only in the UAE but the world.
The report was based on 3,373 responses to an online regional survey that targeted residents of 22 Arab countries of which 76 per cent were male and 24 per cent were female; 48 per cent of the sample was in the 15-29 age group.
The report showed that 71 per cent of Arabs use the internet as an alternative to traditional communication, 28 per cent prefer social media as the primary source of news, which matches the preferences for traditional media, while 29 per cent have never used any electronic government services.
Sara Al Shaer, co-author of the paper and an associate at the DSG’s Governance and Innovation Programme, said that out of the 3,373 respondents, 196 were from the UAE. She added that the answers of the respondents from the UAE were mostly in line with other countries’ results, with a few discrepancies.
The UAE answers were different when it came to the devices they use to access the internet, Sara said that while most people in the UAE use laptops and netbooks to access the internet, people used smartphones more than desktop computers, which did not adhere to the regional levels, as smartphones were not used as frequently in other countries.
As for using the internet to communicate with the government, the UAE had more people agreeing that the internet facilitated communication with the government than other countries in the region. “This shows the maturity of the e-government in the UAE.”
Fadi Salem, co-author of the paper ‘Director of DSG’s Governance and Innovation Programme’, said that this paper is just an indicator “and more detailed research needs to be conducted on each country”.
