Smartphones accounted for 80.6% of device usage in Sri Lanka in 2025, according to the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS), whose Computer Literacy Statistics 2025 Annual Bulletin records a decisive shift away from traditional computers.

Desktop and laptop computers together made up 17.4% of device use. Tablets accounted for 1.1%, and other mobile phones — that is, handsets that are not smartphones — for 0.9%, the Daily Mirror reported.

The four categories sum to exactly 100%, so these are shares of a single measured total rather than overlapping usage rates.

The gap between the two literacy rates is the finding

The DCS puts Sri Lanka’s digital literacy rate at 72% for 2025, against a computer literacy rate of 39.2%.

The department’s own reading of that gap is that the higher digital figure “reflects a shift from personal computers towards smartphones and tablets.” In other words, the roughly 33-percentage-point spread between the two rates is a measure of the population that can use a digital device but cannot use a computer.

Read alongside the device-share numbers, the two datasets describe the same phenomenon from opposite ends. Four in five device interactions now happen on a phone; fewer than two in five people are computer literate. The country has gone online without going through the PC.

Why this matters beyond the statistics

A population that reaches the internet almost entirely through a phone is a different policy problem from one that reaches it through a computer.

Government digital services, e-filing systems, online banking interfaces and job application portals designed around a desktop browser are, on these figures, being used by a minority of the population on the device they were designed for. Formal-sector office work, software development and most data-entry employment still require the computer skills that 60.8% of the population does not have.

The figures do not settle whether the low computer literacy rate reflects cost, availability, or simply that a phone is sufficient for most of what people need.

Not reported

The Daily Mirror gives no comparison with 2024, so the direction and pace of change cannot be established from this report — it is not stated whether the smartphone share rose or fell year on year, or by how much.

No breakdown is given by sector (urban, rural, estate), province, age, gender or income, all of which the DCS has published in previous editions of this bulletin and all of which would show where the computer-literacy shortfall is concentrated. The estate sector has historically recorded the lowest rates by a wide margin.

The report does not define how “device usage” was measured — whether by time spent, by number of sessions, or by self-reported primary device — which determines what the 80.6% figure actually counts. Nor does it give the survey’s sample size, reference period or margin of error.

It is also not stated whether the Computer Literacy Statistics 2025 Annual Bulletin has been published in full, or when.

Sources