Unprecedented growth for Southeast Asia’s $50B internet economy
In 2016, a Google-Temasek study predicted the SEA internet e-Conomy would be worth $200B by 2025. This year’s update highlights the SEA internet e-Conomy will hit $50B by end-2017, driven by accelerated growth and investment in travel, media, ride hailing and e-commerce sectors. Here are five key highlights:
1. Unprecedented growth for Southeast Asia’s $50B internet economy
Google-Temasek e-Conomy SEA, released in May 2016, highlighted Southeast Asia as the world’s fastest growing internet region, with an existing internet user base of 260M projected to grow to 480M users by 2020. In the research, we predicted that Southeast Asia’s internet economy will grow to $200B by 2025 and that $40–50B in investments will be required over a decade to achieve that goal.
Fast forward to 2017, Southeast Asia’s internet user base continues to grow rapidly. There will be 330M monthly active internet users by year-end 2017, adding over 70M new users since 2015 at 13% CAGR. In Southeast Asia, mobile is the internet, as more than 90% of Southeast Asia’s internet users are on smartphones. It is hard to overestimate the absolute prominence of mobile as the access point and driver of Southeast Asia’s internet economy. Users in Southeast Asia are incredibly engaged, spending an average of 3.6 hours per day on mobile internet,1 more than in any other region in the world.
We estimate that Southeast Asia’s internet economy will reach $50B in 2017. Growing at 27% CAGR, it has outpaced the 20% 10-year CAGR projected in Google-Temasek e-Conomy SEA and is on a solid trajectory to exceed $200 B by 2025. All sectors of the internet economy have experienced solid growth in 2017. Online travel reached $26.6B led by growth in airline and hotel online bookings. Online media touched $6.9B driven by online ads and gaming. E-commerce and ride hailing have been under the spotlight growing the fastest at over 40% CAGR, capturing consumers’ preferences with evolving business models, and attracting the majority of the investments in the region. As a result, they are the focus of Google-Temasek e-Conomy SEA Spotlight 2017.
2. SEA e-commerce reaches $11B, fueled by investments in booming marketplaces
Read more on Think with Google APAC.
