Digitally connected consumers use wireless and mobile technology to make their lives easier and save time, shows the latest report from Nielsen, a global information and measurement company. The report recaps developments from 2012 and provides insights into the consumer, retail and media trends shaping the New Zealand marketplace.

Rob Clark, Managing Director, Nielsen said, ‘Consumers are increasingly time poor. As a result we crave convenience, anything that makes our lives easier and provides us with more time to do what we love. Consumer connectivity has made a huge contribution to this’.

Nielsen’s report, The Year That Was: How understanding consumers in 2012 will help you plan for tomorrow, identifies that 3.4 million New Zealanders (78% of the population aged 2+) are online in a typical month.

‘We are progressively using the web to save time searching for cars and viewing property (1.2 million New Zealanders visited an automotive site and 819,000 visited a real estate site in November 2012). Further evidence of this is the growth of online shopping with over half of us actively purchasing online’ states Tony Boyte, Research Director, Nielsen.

Of online New Zealanders, 95% are using a broadband connection at home. More than three quarters (76%) of broadband access for New Zealand homes is now via a wireless connection (up from 65% in 2011) compared to just 24% for fixed broadband (down from 35%).

Boyte adds, ‘Wi-fi allows multiple devices to access simultaneously from anywhere in the house, giving consumers the freedom to be anywhere they want while they browse.’

Mobile access to the internet has grown significantly. More homes in New Zealand have internet access than those that have PCs or laptops (see chart).

‘This shows that people are now using a multitude of devices around the house to make accessing the internet more convenient’, Boyte explains.

Smartphone ownership has grown by over 11% in 2012 (1.7 million New Zealanders now have a smartphone) and there has been 52% growth in the number of people using their smartphone features. Tablet ownership has more than doubled to reach 395,000 and electronic book readers are now owned by over 5% of New Zealanders.