Staying closer: Why the next internet giants will be Asian
Innovation in the mobile industry has had many sources. In the early years, the Nordic region and Europe were far ahead, today the US and its vibrant ICT industry is in lead. The next decades will belong to Asia.
One of the company slogans of Grameenphone, our Bangladeshi company and Telenor’s first greenfield operation in Asia, was “stay close”. That’s what the digital service innovators of the mobile internet age must do, too. Understanding the needs and desires of customers in emerging Asia is the biggest competitive advantages of its innovators.
A new breed of regional stars
Some companies are born globals. They grow out of a university dorm room and become global players that disrupt entire industries. Others are “one-hit-wonders”. Today, we see a new breed of innovative hardware and software companies, born and bred in Asia, who perform tremendously well in the region. Common to all of them is that they are able to serve value-conscious Asian mass market consumers with services they truly value. Companies like Xiaomi, Symphony and Micromax are making quality smartphones at extremely affordable price points, while software developers and content providers like Tencent, Naver and Alibaba are filling them with content that completely dominate certain markets.
The Asian data explosion
Their growth is a result of the strong demand from Asian consumers embracing the internet faster and more enthusiastically than most could imagine. One year back, Telenor’s median user globally would consume less than 100 MB in a month. Today, that number is about 50% higher in our European markets. But in Asia, median Thai and Malaysian customers use four times more data than a year ago. Our Indian operation, Uninor, who started marketing what’s likely the world’s cheapest social media access at INR 1 per day, now see median usage at 300MB/month. The digital future of Asia belongs to companies that are able to balance efficient operations, great distribution with attractive, relevant and useful content.
It’s all about inclusion
Still, in our Asian footprint of 1.1 billion people only 15% access the internet today. Despite steadily decreasing costs of both devices and service costs, the internet is still – or is perceived as – a luxury for the few. Internet for All is not only about enabling use, it’s also about giving people a good reason to go online. It’s about giving them the relevance and the utility that makes it worthwhile for them to spend some of the money in their pocket that day, on connectivity. This is where Asian developers have a window of opportunity.
Making an impact
How can you make your world better using digital communication? How can an app or a digital service transform your society in a positive way? We asked young entrepreneurs and opinionated youth in our Asian markets, and invited them to co-create and evolve their ideas with our seasoned experts. Out came a plethora of ideas – some known, some new – all with a fresh perspective and a local twist. A flood alert app. An affordable hearing aid service. A mobile ERP system for small scale farmers. New ways to enjoy live television. A simpler method to claim your car insurance. A digital service to enhance the personal safety of women. Enabling identification of mission persons through facial recognition.
Behind these ideas as passionate and driven youth, from all walks of life but with a shared ambition to improve their community, their society by taking full advantage of mobile and digital communication. Many more are to be identified as we engage Asia’s digital natives in discussing and finding smarter and more relevant solutions. Some of these are apps and services that can make it big and go global. Many of them are just useful solutions to a critical, local problem. One stimulates new business creation, employment and GDP growth. The other helps solve real problems, and give entrepreneurs useful experiences to succeed next time.
Inviting youth and entrepreneurs to co-create our digital future
I won’t pretend to know what 160 million people in six different countries in Asia are looking for, not today and certainly not tomorrow. But as an organization with 21,000 employees and 1.3 million retail touchpoints in Asia, we collectively know a great deal about what people in our footprint care about, what their daily joys and frustrations are, how they value the services we deliver. We know what products are useful to them and which ones are there only to entertain. We know that they worry – like all of us do – with kids going online, but similarly appreciate the fact that their children can access the world’s greatest source of knowledge and information – from the palm of their hand.
In all our Asian markets, we are now reaching out to and inviting in young people and entrepreneurs with opinions and ideas about our common digital future. As a mobile operator and internet service provider, we are in the business of enabling people to reap the benefits of being connected. To do so, we must deliver content and services that are useful, local and relevant. They must be attractive and fun, sure – but they must also deliver a value greater that what our customers pay for them.
Internet for All is not about mindless data consumption, but about delivering real value to real people.
-Sigve
Telenor Group programs for young entrepreneurs
Digital Winners (www.digitalwinners.no) – conference gathering the internet ecosystem, startups and investors to network, share and discuss ideas. Award for the “Best Asian App” to be handed out during the summit, identified through local competitions in dtac, DiGi, Grameenphone, Uninor, Telenor Pakistan and Telenor Myanmar.
Telenor Youth Summit (www.telenor.com/youthsummit) – summit for opinionated youth with ideas for how to realize lasting positive change using mobile and digital communication, organized with the Nobel Peace Centre around the time of the Nobel Peace Prize events in Oslo in December every year.
