Digital Marketing in Asia Pacific

As previously mentioned Dell have released a new phone to the Chinese market, a phone with some very confusing limitations. The Dell Mini 3i lacks wifi and 3G capabilities, which these days makes it nearly an antique in the eyes of western consumers, myself included.

To understand why Dell would want to make such a limited mobile, you only have to look at the 3G subscriber numbers. China Mobile, for example, has 497 Million subscribers in total but only 1.09 million of those utilize the 3G network. This means 3G enabled “Smart Phones” make up only 0.21% of their total current business, making a wifi enabled 3G phone a truly niche product. To put this in perspective, AT&T Mobility have 79 million subscribers and have reported 40.8% of them having 3G devices.

With all these facts considered, the Dell Mini 3i looks well suited for the current market and set to do very well.

Sources: AT&T Mobility China Mobile

It is interesting when Hichame in his post talks about Baidu vs Google in mobile search and the Chinese Search engine viewing mobile search a ‘strategic focus’ for the future. Google has been fighting hard to wrestle market share from Baidu in the Chinese market for the past 2 years without much success and Baidu continues to dominate the search market in China. In fact Baidu continues to be the search engine of choice for China with a market share of 75.7%, while its closest rival Google only had a 19.8% share (down 1.1 percentage point from the previous quarter). Microsoft Bing only manage to secure 0.3 percent of the Chinese market since its launch in June 2009 (for more details, click here).

While there is huge potential in the online market in China, Google and many foreign companies still find it difficult to make a dent in the Chinese market due to Language, Culture, Legal System and Infrastructure. E.g. Google China hit a setback in June when the government punished it for allowing pornographic links to appear in its search results. China at one point blocked Google.com and other Google services, and the company changed its algorithm to filter porn from search results. Lots of localization and investment (time and money) would be required in order to be successful in China.

Below are some interesting statistics on China:

• Estimated 298 million Internet users (Source: InternetWordStats).
• 2.87 million website registered within its terrority (an increase of 91.4% from 2007).
• Half of the top 20 site in APAC (by traffic) are based in China (Source: Trend
• 86% of all Advertisers in China uses Baidu, while 60.2% uses Google (Source: China Internet Watch)
• User Generated Content is very powerful in China with 58% of consumer purchased being influenced by online consumer reviews,  ratings, blogs, forum and bulletin board (Source: Netpop)
• 46% of the Chinese would search via Search Engine before making their purchases (compared to 25% in America).

Media Asia have an interesting article about Baidu, China’s largest Search Engine, making Mobile Search a ‘strategic focus’ for the future. I think that sounds about right, Baido needs to launch some innovative mobile apps quickly to maintain it’s head-on battle with Google on the Chinese Search front.

“There are 150 million WAP users in China so it’s approaching critical mass in terms of mobile internet for the moment, and now is the time when mobile players can start monetising this,” Bensaid said. “Mobile internet used to very much be entertainment-driven, whether it was accessing news, MP3s or pictures, but now it’s a more generic tool for search because mobile can be extremely local.” (Media Asia)

In Japan where Yahoo has the largest market share, Google has used the Mobile channel as a backdoor to gaining some market share, and it looks like the same is happening in China… especially with the recent news of Android phones being launched there soon (eg. Dell).

Baidu will certainly need to move quickly, but I don’t think creating a user-friendly Search function, is going to be enough. To compete with Google it will really need to develop an ecosystem around it’s API and encourage 3rd party developers to use it’s Search API and functionality in as many apps as possible. It’ll be interesting to see how this space develops.

While all of us know that Social Networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other blogging sites is fast growing to become an important part of the online channel, never would one thought that it would become an important selection criteria in our next job. I was reading this article with interest and how new PR Hire must blog, tweet and use social networks. In the study by ipressroom, knowledge in social network is considered to be very important (See Below)

Important Knowledge for PR and/or Marketing Job Candidates

Departments Managing different Aspect of Web Strategy

These social media skills will likely increase in importance as PR professionals continue to take the lead in managing most organizations’ social media communications channels. Click here to read in detail.

The Economist has a great article about how Asia’s emerging economies are bouncing back from the economic recession… It appears that very few forecasters could have predicted the scale of recovery seen by the Asian markets, and the Economist delves into the detail to identify the why’s, the how’s and the sustainability of such growth over the long term.

Here’s an excerpt:

Average growth figures conceal big differences within Asia over the past year. China, India and Indonesia were among the few economies in the world that continued to expand throughout the global downturn (though China’s virtually stalled late last year). But the smaller, more open Asian economies were badly hit. Between September and March real GDP fell by an average annualised rate of 13% in Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Yet the countries that have so far published second-quarter GDP figures show an impressive bounce. Comparing the second quarter with the first at an annualised rate, China’s GDP grew by 15%, South Korea’s by almost 10%, Singapore’s soared by 21% and Indonesia’s managed a respectable 5%. Other countries in the region are also likely to show a rebound. It is true that output in South Korea and Singapore was still lower than a year earlier, but quarterly changes are more useful for spotting turning points—and this is how growth rates are most commonly measured in America.

The good news of course is that this growth relates to both Online and Offline channels. It won’t be long before a lot of the money being generated will filter through to the online retailers, online travel companies and an increase in various online marketing channels…

Good news all around… I just hope it can be sustained. For more details you can read the whole article here.

I wrote last week, about some strange rumors regarding Dell releasing an Android powered phone in the Chinese market. Well as it turn’s out these rumors were true and The Register has some images to prove it…

The device is called Dell Mini 3i, and on the face of it it looks like  your average touchscreen smartphone… but apparently can’t handle Wi-Fi or 3G… which seems like a silly drawback for this era in telecoms.

While news on the Internet has been focused on the darlings of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, mySpace and Friendster, the size of the non-English speaking markets cannot be ignored. China with approximately 298,000,000 Internet Users (source: InternetWorld Stats), represents 45.8% of the Internet population in Asia. These Internet users are hungry for the new media and wants to participate in the new social network which they can call their own. As such, it is no surprise that Kaixin001 (or literal translations from Chinese means “Happy Site”), the latest new comer to Facebook clone wars in China, is China’s fastest growing social network (amassed a staggering 7.5 million users in the first 5 months since its launch). It is now ranked 95 in terms of traffic on Alexa.

Kaixin001 - China's Fastest Growing Social Network Site Demographics

Kaixin001 appeals to white-collar office workers with a simpler UI that is more intuitive to older audiences. The site succeeds simply by cloning only the most successful Facebook applications and bringing them to the Chinese market before anyone else. You can read more on Kaixin001 at TechCrunch.

Inc, the magazine dedicated to start-ups and the entrepreneurial spirit has a great slide-show of the Top 10 Asian run companies in the US. While this does not relate to the Asian market itself, I thought it would be great to share as it does reflect the far-reaching entrepreneurial skills of Asians abroad.

You can view the slide-show here.

I recently read a great essay by Chinese VC & Blogger, Isaac Mao. The essay, translated in English on Joi Ito’s blog, is a must read for anyone involved in the world of online marketing and the rapidly increasing trends of web2.0 and social media.

The essay is well written and is a light read (by academic levels), discussing the human propensity to share and how it’s developed over the recent years…  here’s a good excerpt to give you more of an idea.

Thus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative ideas if you keep the sharing process firmly in mind. The idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing, you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you, and the world, more creative.

You can read the full article here. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s great food for thought.

Being in the online industry since 1999, I have seen tremendous changes to the online industry in Asia Pacific. Growth has been phenomenal, especially in the last 5 years. Consumers are now embracing Internet into their lifestyle – be it shopping, networking, keeping connected to friends, etc. Not only has the internet infrastructure (e.g. online payment methods) matured in many parts of Asia, business are also seeing the Internet as a main driver for growth. More consumers are also interacting with merchants via feedback channels (such as forum, user reviews site, social groups, etc).

Some interesting statistics from “ASIA PACIFIC Digital Marketing Yearbook 2009″(source:www.asiadma.com). For those interested in more detailed stats, please register at www.asiadma.com and download a copy of the yearbook.

APAC Internet Population

• Social networking is huge in Asia Pacific with more than 450 million consumers in Asia Pacific participating in social media – a growth rate of 29%.
• Online shopping throughout Asia is a “growing trend”, with 44% of users having shopped online for the past three years; Regional shoppers bought an average of 3.1 purchases online, spending on average $612.40 on their purchases over the 3 months period.
• Online shopping seems to be a pleasurable experience for Asia’s consumers, with 71% finding it convenient; 66% finding it easy; and 62% of users finding
  it simpler than catalogue or telephone shopping (Source:Mastercard Worldwide Insights).
• Price and security matter to online shoppers across Asia. A sizeable 87% of shoppers cite secure payment facilities as an important factor affecting their online purchasing decisions, with 87% also citing price and 85% noting convenient payment methods (Source:Mastercard Worldwide Insights).