E-commerce, 5G to propel Asia-Pacific

E-commerce, 5G to propel Asia-Pacific

Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are regarded as the key drivers of growth in Southeast Asia's economy as e-commerce gains in popularity.

"Mobile internet users in these markets are among the most engaged globally on e-commerce platforms such as Lazada, Shopee and Tokopedia, which provide scalable, readily accessible platforms for smaller retailers to transact online with their customers," said the "Mobile Economy: Asia-Pacific 2018" report published recently at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Shanghai.

Mats Granryd, GSMA director-general, said Asia-Pacific has experienced rapid migration to mobile broadband networks and smartphones in recent years and is set to be a pioneer as it moves to the 5G era.

"Mobile operators in Asia will invest almost US$200 billion (6.62 trillion baht) over the next few years to upgrade and expand their 4G networks and launch new 5G networks to accelerate the growth of Asia's digital economies and societies," he said.

In 2017, mobile technologies and services generated 5.4% of GDP across Asia-Pacific, adding $1.5 trillion of economic value, the report said. By 2022, the mobile economy of this region will generate more than $1.8 trillion of economic value, it forecasts.

Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are seeing accelerated migration to 4G. Across the region, 4G is expected to surpass 50% of connections next year.

Meanwhile, launches of commercial 5G networks in Australia, China, Japan and South Korea beginning next year will see Asia reach 675 million 5G connections by 2025, more than half of the global 5G total expected by that point, the report said.

By 2025, it is expected that 62% of Asia's mobile connections will be running on 4G networks and 14% on 5G.

More than half of the world's mobile subscribers live in Asia-Pacific, which is home to the world's two largest mobile markets, China and India.

At the end of last year, there were 2.7 billion unique mobile subscribers in Asia, equivalent to 67% of region's population. This number is forecast to grow to 3.2 billion (73% of the population) by 2025, with about half of the new subscribers added over this period coming from India, the report said.

With the rapid growth of the startup ecosystem in Asia-Pacific, the number of active tech hubs in the region's emerging markets doubled during 2017.

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