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Mobile app economy

Asia’s mobile app usage grew 77% last year, according to a new study from Flurry Analytics.

By tracking 610m devices it found that the surge in app usage in the year up to April 2015 has been driven by three categories:

  • Shopping and lifestyle app sessions went up 278%.
  • News and reading increased 134%.
  • Utilities and productivity increased 89%.

Other categories also continued to grow at a slower rate, such as social and messaging (42%), games (25%) and music, media and entertainment (40%).

Games still rule the roost overall, accounting for 25% of time spent using apps.

TV ads retain their influence in Malaysia

A Nielsen study shows that TV retains a strong influence over purchasing decisions in Malaysia.

10% of Malaysians rank TV as their top source for product information and just under half (46%) say TV ads exert the most influence over their purchase decisions, putting it in second place behind recommendations from family and friends.

Which of these sources impact your purchase decisions?

Indian ecommerce moves away from price wars

Ecommerce brands in India have begun to focus more on brand building instead of ads that emphasise low prices, according to a former marketing head at Diageo India.

Santosh Kanekar outlined a three-stage progression in advertising:

  1. Discounts.
  2. Rational value proposition.
  3. Brand-led approach (e.g. Coca-Cola, Apple).

He suggested that India’s ecommerce firms were largely still stuck in phase one and had so far failed to build an emotional connection with their customers.

Rural Indians take to social

Social media usage in rural India has doubled in the past year, albeit from a very small base.

A study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India shows that 25m people in rural India now use social media, compared to 118m of those in the urban population.

College students make up 34% of the social media population, while six in ten users access social networks using a mobile device.

Chinese cross-border ecommerce predicted to grow

A new study by Accenture and AliResearch predicts that China’s cross-border ecommerce will increase more than ten-fold to $245bn by 2020.

Global cross-border ecommerce transactions are set to reach $994bn in the same period, a massive increase from $230bn in 2014.

The report also predicted that there will be 200m Chinese online shoppers by 2020 out of a global total of 900m.

Global cross-border B2C volume 2014-2020

Chinese look online

A new study from PwC shows that the internet has become the main engagement and transaction channel for Chinese people.

The survey found that 85% of Chinese consumers choose a digital channel as the first step for product research.

Furthermore 86% of Chinese respondents said they had showroomed – i.e. browsing in-store before buying online – compared to 68% globally.

You get what you pay for

A survey of mobile users across APAC found that respondents were largely willing to pay extra for improved network performance.

Just over half of respondents (56% vs. 45% globally) said they would pay extra for better coverage and for faster downloads (56% vs. 42% globally).

Almost a third said they would pay for a time-limited speed increase in order to stream a film or watch a live event.

Internet to dominate Aussie adspend

A new report suggests that the internet will account for just over half (51%) of adspend in Australia by 2019, up from 34% in 2014.

This includes all forms of online media, such as display, search and video. In real terms this represents $8.2bn of adspend.

Thais load up YouTube

YouTube’s push into Thailand has already had a big impact, according to the country head of Google Thailand.

After launching a dedicated Thai homepage earlier this year, Ariya Banomyong said that watch time has increased by 110% and there has also been a 50% uplift in the number of videos being uploaded by partners and creators.

Furthermore, around half of YouTube usage in Thailand takes place on mobile.

Multichannel in Singapore

And finally, here’s an infographic from Flipit.com that gives an insight into Singaporean shopping habits…