IT usage in households and companies:

Young people not reading printed news

It has become common, especially among younger persons, to read news on the Internet instead of from a printed newspaper. This percentage is approximately the same among native born Swedes as among those born in other countries but is higher among men than women

Only every second person aged 65-84 has Internet access at home

In the spring of  2008, over half (58 percent) of persons aged 65-74 had Internet access at home. For the group aged 75-84 the percentage is 20 percent for the years 2006-2007, according to the Living Conditions Survey.

Internet almost as common among foreign born persons

84 percent of native born Swedes use the Internet regularly. Corresponding percentages for persons born in the Nordic countries was 78 percent, other European countries 80 percent and persons born outside Europe at 75 percent. The differences between women and men are consistently large among those of foreign birth.

These and a good deal of other information about IT use is available in the report "Use of computers and the Internet by private persons in 2008” that Statistics Sweden will publish today.

Nearly 60 percent of small businesses have a homepage

Of those small businesses (1-9 employees) that have a homepage, one in five offers the opportunity of booking or reserving goods and services online and almost one in ten offers the opportunity to pay online.

Mobile Internet use continues to rise

The percentage of businesses connected to the Internet by mobile telephone networks increased from 33 percent to 41 percent between 2007 and 2008. There has been a stable increase since 2003.

Open source code more common in other countries

The use of open source code operative systems has not had the breakthrough in Sweden businesses compared to other EU countries. One in ten businesses uses such operative systems in Sweden. Those countries with the highest percentages for the use of such open source code are Lithuania followed by the Czech Republic, where almost one in four businesses use it.