Newspaper readership in Peninsular Malaysia for the fourth quarter of last year (4Q08) grew about two percentage points to 55% from 52.9% in the same period in 2007, possibly in tandem with population growth of those aged 15 and above.

Carat Media's monthly newsletter quoted figures from Nielsen Media Index for 4Q08 which showed that the population of those aged 15 years and more increased by 2.2% to 14.3 million in the fourth quarter of last year.

Bahasa dailies seemed to have gained the most from the small increase in newspaper readership, growing from 26.8% to 29.3% in the fourth quarter. English dailies saw marginal growth of 0.3 percentage point while Chinese and Tamil dailies saw a drop of 0.2 and 0.4 percentage point respectively.

Carat Media also reported that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission's Household Use of the Internet Survey (HUIS) 2008 found that more than half (54.5%) of home Internet users also access the Internet at their workplaces.

Some 58% of Internet users also use instant messaging (IM), with the most popular being Yahoo Messenger and Windows Messenger, followed by Google Talk and Skype.

Ninety-five per cent of Internet users log on to IM for chatting with family and friends, 33% use it to have study discussions and 13.6% use it for business communication.