Noteworthy in 2021

Patterns of device ownership and use remained fairly conservative in Germany.

• Smartphone ownership among internet users ages 16 to 64 passed 95% in H1 2020 and reached 95.9% in H1 2021. Only 2.9% of those polled had a feature phone. As in H1 2020, this was one of the lowest percentages recorded worldwide for this metric.
• The share of internet users who owned a desktop or laptop fell slightly year over year (YoY) but was still high by global standards, at 83.5% in H1 2021. Penetration correlated directly with age; in the oldest cohort, 88.5% of respondents owned a PC. More than half (54.3%) of internet users owned a tablet—a small increase from 2020.
• Though almost all of Germany’s internet users owned a smartphone, most didn’t spend a great deal of time on them. In H1 2021, the average time spent per day with mobile was 2 hours, 18 minutes (2:18)—compared with 3:19 spent with desktops/laptops and tablets. Mobile devices also claimed less time than broadcast TV (2:19). This pattern, typical of many Western European countries, is a far cry from the ones seen in much of Latin America and Asia-Pacific, where mobile time often exceeded live TV time by 2 hours or more.