The mysterious big ‘W’ in Asia

In “It’s a mad, mad, mad mad world”, “Smiler” Grogan told the five motorists who tried to save him from the car crash that there’s a treasure trove worth $350,000 buried in Santa Rosita State Park near the Mexican border, under a mysterious “big W”.

The mysterious “big W” reminds me of a similar story that resonates well in the heart of Asia. The current mobile and digital advertising market in Asia has slowly rise and its fortune has been estimated to exceed $7 billion by 2019. An analytics study conducted by market researcher, Frost and Sullivan, are determined that Southeast Asia will continue to flourish at a compound annual growth rate of 48 percent from 2015 to 2019, after it hit $1 billion in 2014. The rapid growth has proven that digital in Southeast Asia will continue to grow much faster than the other mature regions in the world.

Rising number of mobile users in Asia

When it comes to mobile technology, Korea and Japan were amongst the early users of mobile in Asia. Having adopted 3G at an early stage, these two countries have been leading the region in terms of technology, and other kind of services providing diversified content that was diffused within Asia. Although there has been a plummet in the number of mobile subscribers, other parts of the Asian countries could be seen catching up to become the center of the growth in Asia.

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As seen in the above graph, ROA Holdings has selected 10 countries in Asia that are assumed to show key movements in the near future. The total number of mobile subscribers in both China and India are currently occupying almost 75% of the rest of the 10 countries. Smaller counterparts such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam are following suit with a rapid growth rate. Myanmar, on the other hand, is slowly catching up although it is still nascent in the mobile industry.

The high penetration of mobile users in Asia has resulted in the highest share in transactions through mobile devices, which was registered at 71.2% in 2009. The whopping number of mobile users in 2009 have led to the highest record of mobile payment users worldwide, followed by Europe and North America.

Mobile preference in Asia

There is no doubt that Android remains the dominant mobile operating system in the region. According to a research study by Frost and Sullivan, Android was easily made dominant for its affordability and high popularity of Chinese low-end smartphones in developing markets. The popularity of Android as a preferred choice of mobile operating system in Asia has made it difficult for game developers in terms of which version of Android to support.

Nevertheless, Frost and Sullivan are positive that smartphone and tablet usage will become mainstream by 2019. For example, in Thailand, 50 percent of their population uses a smartphone. Where else, the average revenue per user for tablets is 4.2 times that of smartphones in the region.