03 March 2008

Netherlands Top EU internet Usage

A recent study by Brussels based research company, Eurostat, shows that online shopping has not yet been fully embraced by the European community. This was quantified in a pdf document released by them. In Romania and Bulgaria, only 3% of the population has made use of online shops.

North-Western European countries are topping the list of online shoppers. With Denmark and Netherlands on top: 55% of their population has shopped online during 2007. Denmark’s figures were however based on 2006, so it can be assumed that it has increased since then. The average figure of online shoppers for the 27 European surveyed is 30%.

Netherlands on the Up

Research data over the last three months however, shows that the Dutch have the highest usage of the internet in general with 84% of its population going online. Greece on the other hand only had 33%. The European average for population using the internet is 57%.

Internet banking is also very popular in Netherlands with 77% of the population making using online banking. Only Finland (84%) and Estonia (83%) have more.

Web shop phobia

 “Safer Internet Day”, which focused on internet security issues was held on 12 February and gave rise to the research. According to the research 14% of the Dutch (European average: 12%) population did not dare shop online for fear of online theft.

Twenty percent of the Dutch population picked up one or more viruses over the internet last year. The European average lies on 23% with Lithuania having the highest occurrence of viruses, 41%.