Smartphones, TVs Lead Fastest Growing Digital Products Segment in APAC

Urbanization and economic recovery in Asia Pacific have been propelling growth of the digital technology industry which achieved a total of $235 billion last year, according to leading market research company GfK Asia.

As a special invited guest speaker at the IFA 2011 Global Press Conference held in Alicante, Spain on 15 April, GfK Asia’s Regional Commercial Director presented on the topic: Heralding a New Digital Era in Asia, where he shared interesting insights on the dynamic digital technology market.

“The technology of mobile communication has come a long way and have evolved so tremendously that today’s consumers are able to perform all sorts of tasks digitally via their smartphones, such as banking, navigation, instant messaging, etc,” commented Mr. Kee. “GfK reports show that consumers in Asia Pacific have been eagerly adopting the smartphone technology, growing the market size of this industry from 31 million units in 2009 by 216 percent to 67 million units last year. We are expecting to see further growth of over 60 percent in unit sales, or a total of 106 million units sold for the year of 2011.”

Another digital product sector which has been experiencing exponential growth is TV. Rising quantities of the popular LED technology TVs have been snapped up by consumers around the region, driving tremendous unit growth which recorded over 3000 percent in 2010 over the previous year. LCD TVs also grew at a significant 56 percent compared to 2009.

“Asia’s developing countries present huge opportunities to manufacturers in the TV market. More than half of the entire population’s households in countries such as India, Philippines, and Indonesia are still using the old-fashioned CRT TVs and GfK reports confirm the rising trend of consumers in these markets switching over to the newer type of flat TV,” highlighted Kee.

According to GfK retail audit for 2010, more than four in every five sets (83%) of TVs sold in India were still CRTs, whereas in Southeast Asia as a whole, the proportion of CRT TV unit sales stood at 58 percent.

“Six among 10 of the world’s most populous countries helm from Asia, and backed by the region’s young, rapidly urbanizing population who are possessing increasing spending power, the explosion of a new digital technology era is imminent and just round the corner, if not already happening in some of the developed markets,” said Kee. “We confidently predict that the overall industry will continue to grow further by at least another 17 percent to hit $275 billion this year,” he concluded.

GfK Asia