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Dear publishers,

We are continuing to make overviews of the Internet usage in the Baltic States. Today’s country under review is Latvia.

General overview:

The population of Latvia is 1,965,686 (2016*).

Official language: Latvian 56.3%.

Other languages spoken in Latvia: 56.3%, Russian 33.8%, other 0.6% (includes Polish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian), unspecified 9.4%.

Ethnic groups: Latvian 61.1%, Russian 26.2%, Belarusian 3.5%, Ukrainian 2.3%, Polish 2.2%, Lithuanian 1.3%, other 3.4%.

 

 

 

Internet usage in Latvia

Number of Internet users in Latvia is 1,491,951(2016*).

Average Internet speed in Latvia is 18.3 Mbps.

Average Latency: 99 ms.

Average Download: 43.06 Mbps.

Average Upload: 45.36 Mbps.

 

 

The following statistics shows how often Latvian Internet users surf the Internet. 84% of the population accesses the Internet on a daily basis:

 

Daily Internet usage in Latvia by age group (*2016):

 

It is not a surprise that young people aged 16 – 34 are the most active Internet users like in many other countries.

Market share of web browsers in Latvia in 2016:

Top sites in Latvia:

  

Fact: In comparison to the rest of the world, Europe has the highest rate of Internet users who visit piracy sites rather often. Latvia has the highest percentage of such users (46.33% of the population).

Social media usage in Latvia

There is a local social network in Latvia – Draugiem.lv. It is widely used by Latvian people. As for the international social networks, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular ones. Also, we should mention that Russian Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki are used there, mostly by Russian part of the population of Latvia.

 

 

 

Popular Facebook pages in Latvia:

 

Latvia online shopping

According to the survey by Gemius, 74% of Latvian people make purchases online – 52% of women and 48% of men. Most purchases are made via local Latvian e-commerce sites, though there are people who do it on European (77%), Chinese (55%), U.S. (42%) and other e-commerce sites.

Have a look at the best-selling categories of goods on the Internet:

Online shoppers say that the main reason why they make purchases online is that they can buy goods or services at lower prices on the Internet than in conventional shops.

Along with local e-commerce websites, Latvians use international ones as well. The most popular is ebay.com followed by aliexpress.com, amazon.com, sportsdirect.com.

Mobile networks operators in Latvia

1.   Latvian Mobile Telephone

2.   Tele2

3.   Bite Latvija

4.     Triatel