Has Pokemon Go taken over the world? Not yet.

Disclosure: The author is the Account & Business Development Manager at Isentia.

Giant Pikachus Roam the City of Yokohama. Photo credit: AP via International Business Times

Pokemon Go, the first augmented reality mobile game gone viral was released on July 6, 2016. Business Insider has introduced the game as a future “mega-hit” before the E3 Expo, and heck, they were spot on!

Since its release, it has been an absolute hit by becoming the fastest app to be downloaded in both App Store and Google Play. AppInstitute’s real-time statistics indicate that globally, there have been 9,326 downloads in the 2 minutes since I have been on the page – check it out yourself, the numbers are staggering!

Pokemon Go downloads by country

As Chicago Tribune, BBC, Time, and The Guardian have published, Pokemon Go has taken over the world.

But has it really?

Pokemon Go has yet to be released in any Asian country. Examining the region, smartphone penetration is very high, which provides massive potential for Pokemon Go to grow their user base. Countries like Malaysia and Thailand have smartphone penetration rates of over 50 percent, with Singapore even exceeding 90 percent.

In addition, together with the LTE network becoming widely available, nothing is stopping the AR craze from taking over Southeast Asia as well. Funnily enough, on Tuesday, a French man was detained in West Java for breaching Cirebon Military Base. According to his statement, he was hunting Pokemons. Eh bien, non Pokemons pour vous monsieur!

With the limited amount of information on planned releases across the region, Pokemon Go enthusiasts are gathering on social and digital media networks. Tens of thousands of netizens are looking for answers and discussing when the game will be released in their respective countries. It is safe to say that people are going crazy about Pokemon Go even before it is released – well, at least in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Pokemon Go buzz trend

According to Isentia, there has been a total of 166,658 unique posts on Pokemon Go across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia since the game’s release date. We are talking about 15,140 posts in Singapore, 11,245 in Malaysia, and 140,273 in Indonesia. All of this in two weeks. In terms of buzz, Indonesia clearly outnumbered the other countries.

Regional buzz breakdown

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