SINGAPORE - About 34 percent of the Internet users aged 16 to 60 in China's Hong Kong have a tablet PC, making it the most penetrated market worldwide, according to a latest global study.

The survey by Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson also found that Singapore trailed with a penetration rate of 31 percent, and Norway is the third at 20 percent, the Straits Times reported on Tuesday.

Ericsson polled more than 47,500 Internet users aged 16 to 60 in 58 countries and regions for the survey in the first quarter of this year.

Vishnu Singh, regional head of Ericsson ConsumerLab, an internal research unit, said the findings are consistent with the status of the two cities reputed for mobile-networking technologies and tech-savviness.

Singapore's tablet-ownership rate is expected to grow to close to 60 percent by the end of this year, due to the more convenient size and better portability of the tablet than the laptop, he said.

Singapore topped the world in terms of smart phone ownership, with 74 percent of the Internet users aged 16 to 60 using smart phones. Hong Kong was the second at 73 percent and the United Arab Emirates came in the third place at 64 percent.

The smart phone penetration rate in Singapore is expected to rise to 84 percent by the year end as users upgrade to newer models.

Mobile data usage will soar by 20 times come 2017, according to Ericsson's global estimates.

Singapore operator StarHub said the volume of mobile data on its network doubled from 2009 to last year. It expects such growth to continue as smart phone and tablet ownership rises.

To prevent growth of data use from spiralling out of control, SingTel is slashing the cap on free mobile data use from July 1, with StarHub following suit.