Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Growth of Digital in Asia

Recent PWC Digital IQ survey results show that Asian businesses have a more cohesive digital roadmap for their organizations compared to organizations in others regions. 57% of survey respondents in Asia agree that they have a single, multi-year enterprise roadmap, compared to 50% respondents in Western Europe and 57% respondents in North America. Further ad spend in Asian markets is expected to grow in double digits in several countries (India: 11.0% in 2015 and +12.0% in 2016; Philippines: +10.2% in 2015 and +12.3% in 2016; Vietnam: +11.3% in 2015 and +13.5% in 2016).

Further, Asian brands are investing in responding to customers / potential customers on social media. Brands in the APAC region answered on average 67% of all questions posed to them on social media in Q2 2014. That number has now increased to 82% according to Socialbakers latest analysis of its brand data.

The rapidly growing mobile penetration in Asian markets explains the emphasis on digital and social media. For most consumers in Asian markets such as India, it is largely becoming a mobile first market where they access internet and social media on mobile devices. Smartphone penetration is expected to grow tremendous with 40.8% of the mobile population in Asia-Pacific expected to use a smartphone in 2015, equating to just over 1bn this year. China currently accounts for 28.3% of all smartphone users on the planet.

The mobile and social media usage of Asian consumers is different from their American or European counterparts. Most smart phone users are android users. Further, consumers are more likely to use Whatsapp and other local apps for video and other content sharing. For e.g., in India Whatsapp beats Facebook as preferred medium for video sharing. 51% of respondents shared videos via Whatsapp, 45% on Facebook. Malaysia, like India, is seeing the growing use of Whatsapp (46%) as a video sharing medium. In the Philippines, G+ and Instagram are more popular platforms for mobile video sharing than Whatsapp and Twitter.


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