<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Affluent here go for paid newspapers
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->PAID newspapers are affluent Singaporeans' No. 1 choice for news by an overwhelming margin.
A poll by research company Synovate among 1,310 Singaporeans earning $6,500 and more showed that 83 per cent read such newspapers regularly. This is the second highest among eight cities in the region, just a shade behind Bangkok's 84 per cent.
The poll found that the elite in five other regional cities - Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Sydney and Melbourne - also preferred paid newspapers. The exception: South Korea, where watching TV serials over high-speed Internet connections and online gaming is de rigueur and only 9 per cent read paid newspapers.
Free dailies did less well across the board, with much lower readership for all cities except Hong Kong, where 78 per cent go for free dailies and 74 per cent, paid ones.
Synovate identified 481,640 people in Singapore aged between 25 and 64 - 31 per cent of the population - as affluent. The survey also tracked other lifestyle and media consumption preferences of the region's elite, such as their use of mobile devices such as cellphones, personal digital assistants, smart phones and portable media players.
This part of the survey found mobile device ownership high among the affluent here, with each person owning an average of 2.4 mobile devices.
Singaporean elites were tops in text messaging, with nine in 10 using their mobile devices to send and receive text messages. Thais did the least text messaging, at 70 per cent.
Singaporeans also like using their devices to take photos, play games and access the Internet.
Not so popular here: downloading music to mobile devices. Only 1.8 per cent do so, against a regional average of 2.7 per cent. Among the cities studied, only Australians did this less.
Watching TV on mobile devices is also relatively unpopular here. While 57 per cent of elite Thais do so, followed by Taiwanese (53 per cent) and Koreans (50 per cent), only 37 per cent of Singaporeans engage in this.
TAN WEIZHEN
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->PAID newspapers are affluent Singaporeans' No. 1 choice for news by an overwhelming margin.
A poll by research company Synovate among 1,310 Singaporeans earning $6,500 and more showed that 83 per cent read such newspapers regularly. This is the second highest among eight cities in the region, just a shade behind Bangkok's 84 per cent.
The poll found that the elite in five other regional cities - Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Sydney and Melbourne - also preferred paid newspapers. The exception: South Korea, where watching TV serials over high-speed Internet connections and online gaming is de rigueur and only 9 per cent read paid newspapers.
Free dailies did less well across the board, with much lower readership for all cities except Hong Kong, where 78 per cent go for free dailies and 74 per cent, paid ones.
Synovate identified 481,640 people in Singapore aged between 25 and 64 - 31 per cent of the population - as affluent. The survey also tracked other lifestyle and media consumption preferences of the region's elite, such as their use of mobile devices such as cellphones, personal digital assistants, smart phones and portable media players.
This part of the survey found mobile device ownership high among the affluent here, with each person owning an average of 2.4 mobile devices.
Singaporean elites were tops in text messaging, with nine in 10 using their mobile devices to send and receive text messages. Thais did the least text messaging, at 70 per cent.
Singaporeans also like using their devices to take photos, play games and access the Internet.
Not so popular here: downloading music to mobile devices. Only 1.8 per cent do so, against a regional average of 2.7 per cent. Among the cities studied, only Australians did this less.
Watching TV on mobile devices is also relatively unpopular here. While 57 per cent of elite Thais do so, followed by Taiwanese (53 per cent) and Koreans (50 per cent), only 37 per cent of Singaporeans engage in this.
TAN WEIZHEN
