A recent survey by Google and Temasek predicts the Internet economy in Southeast Asia will grow 6.5 times to $197 billion by 2025 from its current evaluation of $31 billion, Antara reported.
The survey defines the Internet economy as the total transactions in e-commerce, online travel, ride-hailing applications and electronic advertisements. As a region with a population of 600 million, Southeast Asian Internet users number approximately 260 million.
By 2020, the survey projects users will grow to 480 million, meaning 3.8 million new users getting online every month. For Indonesia, the Internet economy in 10 years is predicted to reach $81 billion.
From that estimation 56.79% ($46 billion) will come from e-commerce transactions, 30.24% ($24.5 billion) from online travel, 6.91% ($5.6 billion) from ride-hailing apps, and 3.3% ($2.7 billion) from digital advertising transactions.
“Advertisers will follow the digital trend. In the US, 38.4% of ads were digital. Indonesia is following this pattern. It will make up 40% [of the Internet economy] by 2025,” Google Indonesia managing director Tony Keusgen said Thursday.
The survey was done in six countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Internet penetration in India is also swelling steadily, up to 34.8% in 2016 from 27% in 2015, presenting massive digital opportunities to reach some of the country’s 1.3 billion-strong population.
China, on the other hand, disappointed, posting negative year-on-year growth (-3%). Its underperformance was attributed to the continuing slowdown in the nation’s economy.
