Services like WhatsApp growing, Portugal above the EU average
The pandemic has accelerated the growth of “over-the-top” (OTT) services, such as WhatsApp, and Portugal has surpassed the European average with no place in terms of their use.
According to the report on the use of OTT services last year, the Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (Anacom) points out that the covid-19 pandemic “has caused a strong growth in OTT services, especially voice or video calls, ‘video streaming on demand’, attendance of online courses”, as well as the purchase of products through the Internet.
“In 2021, 0% of Internet users, 8 points make voice or video calls, 10 percentage points more than in 2020 and 20% more than in 219”, says Anacom.
“Portugal surpassed the average of the 27 countries of the European Union (EU27), with more than 7 percentage points, moving to the 9th position of the ‘ranking’ of use of this type of services”, the regulator.
“If you consider the total number of users and not just serial Internet users, the penetration of these services is 66%, exceeding the average (+1 percentage point) and moving from 23rd to 14th position in the European ranking ‘ of the UE27”, advancing in Anacom, noting that in 2019 Portugal “occupied the last place in this ‘ranking'”.
OTT is an expression used for services made available over the Internet, such as instant messaging services such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, voice and video call services, including FaceTime or Skype, just to give examples, such as also audiovisual services for audio and video, including Apple Music and Spotify, in the case of music, and Netflix, among others.
“‘instant messaging’ was used by 91% of Internet users”, and “the level of use of this type of application in Portugal was 12 percentage points above the EU27 average, occupying the 6th non-corresponding position ‘ranking'”, says Anacom.
“If you consider the total number of employees, and not just Internet users, the penetration of this service in Portugal would be 75%. From this perspective, Portugal was five percentage points above the European average, positioning itself in 12th place of the EU27 ‘ranking'”, stresses the electronic communications regulator.
In 2020, “about 34% of Internet users subscribed to ‘video streaming on demand’ services (+20 percentage points than in 2018), with Portugal in 15th position in the EU27 ranking.
If considered as the total number of users occupying 20 and not just Internet users would be, the penetration of our services in the Portuguese market would be 26% in 2018, 16 percentage points more than in 2018, position in the EU ranking at 27.
“The reading of News online, participation in social networks, one music online and Internet banking’ were other services with participation levels above 50% among Internet users in Portugal”, highlights Anacom.
“The use of social networks, access to online information and civic and political participation online in Portugal was significantly higher than the EU27 media”, with Internet ‘banking’ [serviços de banca] and ‘electronic commerce’ [comércio eletrónico] “were more popular in the EU27 than in Portugal”.
Similar to the average of the EU-27 countries, “the various younger young people, with higher education, students and with higher incomes showed a greater propensity to use the services incident on the top”.
However, the OTT “annual growth” was used for many services with lesser, such as retirement services of the common use 45 years or more in making calls and video over the Internet and 55 services greater than 64 years in the use of ‘ instant messaging'”.