China will be the world’s biggest app market, and other predictions for Asia in 2012 13TH JANUARY 2012 by JON RUSSELL

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve run a series of features looking back at 2011 and forward to 2012 from a number of different angles. We have already reviewed the last year in Asia, and took some time out to get the thoughts of Bubble Motion CEO Tom Clayton on what the next twelve months could hold for the Internet in the region. For those that are not familiar with Bubble Motion, the company runs Bubbly, a voice microblogging service that allows users to send short messages from a smartphone or regular phone. The Singapore-head quartered firm has 12 million users and is particularly popular in Asia, making Clayton a well qualified pundit on the region’s tech scene. Twitter will grow substantially in key markets Asia Pacific is notable for having the world’s highest mobile penetration (registered numbers to people) and Clayton believes that mobile will help extend Twitter beyond the already strong numbers that it enjoys across the region, particularly amongst Indonesia’s 240 million population. “Thanks to limited Internet users and very mobile-centric populations, Twitter use in Indonesia will overtake the US and Brazil in number of tweet volume,” predicts Clayton, before explaining that Japan will also see more growth. Twitter is already huge in Japan, where it has partnered with leading domestic social network Mixi, but the Bubble Motion boss sees the country developer further still, becoming key to Twitter in Asia. The accelerating growth in Japan will be even more impressive, as it will contribute more revenue to the company than all other countries in Asia combined. With over 27 percent of Japanese online population and 22 percent of the Indonesian online population using the network, Twitter will be the first “foreign” social media service to really make huge inroads relative to the entrenched “Big 3″ locally” Facebook will dominate all of Asia by the end of the year Facebook is already colossal in Asia but there are some key pockets and significant markets where it is not yet dominant, while China remains a big issue for it, like many other Western firms. In our Facebook 2012 preview, we foretold that the company will begin to look at the issue of China, putting a strategy on the table in the next twelve months. While Clayton believes that no progress will be made there, unless it partners up, he does feels that Japan, Korea and Taiwan are ripe for the taking: 2012 is the year Facebook takes over the last 3 major Asian countries and dominates the sub-continent. If Facebook can buy a Chinese social network or do a joint venture in China, they may well displace all other local networks. Asia to pass 3 billion mobile users and account for half worldwide Having said that mobile is already big in Asia, the stage is set for the communications medium to develop even further across the continent and account for half of all mobile phone users worldwide, according to Clayton. He believes that “significant economic development across the region”, alongside the increasing sophistication of mobile networks — 4G is already available in Korea and soon to launch in Singapore, for example — and the increasing affordability of devices will drive higher adoption rates. But it isn’t just more users, Clayton foresees that a change in how many Asians will interact with Web is coming. Mobile broadband is growing rapidly to increase the number of Asian mobile Internet users beyond what is already a huge number: In September 2011, China alone surpassed 100M 3G subscriptions, which makes up just 10 percent of its total mobile population. India has reached 859M mobile subscriptions, and Indonesia and Japan each have well over 100M users. With such rapid growth in handheld devices, mobile phone usage far surpasses fixed-line PC usage. For example, In India there are only 70 million Internet users, but there are over 700 million mobile subscribers. Smartphone penetration will remain low but pass 500 million devices While the smartphones will grow beyond the current rate of 19 percent of Asia’s mobile market, Clayton thinks that, outside of major countries, growth will continue but at a lower rate: Singapore, Korea and Malaysia will lead the pack but the largest markets China, India and Indonesia still lag significantly with all of them in single digits in percentage terms. However, when you view it from the absolute number of smartphone devices, the numbers are significant. Taking India as an example, a 9 percent smartphone penetration would equal around 80 million devices. The American expects that smartphone ownership in ‘advanced’ Asia markets like Korea and Japan, will grow beyond 50 percent to mirror its rate in North America and across parts of Europe. It may surprise some but neither Japan nor Korea has a long history of smartphones, although Apple and Google are leading the revolution, as he reveals: Most of their phones, while packed with exhaustive features, are not technically considered smartphones, but rather very capable, feature-rich feature phones. However, iPhone and Android phones are on fire in each country and there seems to be no signs of this growth slowing anytime soon. Apps: China will become world’s biggest market, Asia will keep growing Last year, a report from Flurry found China to be the world’s second largest downloader of apps, and you can see the country’s potential by the fact that China Mobile’s own store has 149 million users. Clayton believes that the time is right for China to overtake the US to take the top spot, while Asia will continue to be an important focus as the only region posting significant growth in app downloads: While app download growth has flattened and even begun to decline in some countries in the Western world, Asia will continue to grow at a break-neck pace, as 3G deployments and coverage are solidified in the emerging markets and more and more users add data plans. Android shipments to Asia grew massively in 2011, tripling in Southeast Asia, and Clayton cites the Google-owned system as being a key part behind the growth of apps, by providing affordable devices for consumers: The MediaTek ecosystem will soon produce numerous sub-$90 Android-powered smartphones that will fuel even further Android growth in the region. Monetization of apps will remain a challenge, but we already see many app providers in the region (like our own), figuring out creative ways to solve that problem. What do you think: Do you agree with Tom Clayton’s predictions, or do you have other ideas of areas that are set to be significant this year in Asia? http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/01/13/china-will-be-the-worlds-biggest-app-market-and-other-predictions-for-asia-in-2012/ JOIN TNW ASIA ON: OR RSS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jon Russell is the Asia Editor of The Next Web. Jon has been commenting on and writing about Asia's internet, technology and start-up scenes since he swapped London for Bangkok in 2008. You can reach him through Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or by emailing jon@thenextweb.com.

bite the apple

Why are those 10 minutes of sleep...b4 u actually need to get up, so precious?!…. was my sister’s facebook status. Agreeing wholeheartedly, I commented, “Because you are stealing them...Always exciting to do what one is not supposed to do...!” Isnt it true? Forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter, that’s what got Adam and Eve into huge trouble. Problem is that while they were denied just that one experience and even then couldn’t resist having a taste, we have temptations galore! We encounter nays and don’ts at every turn; some imposed by law, some by society, others by those close to us, and yes, some restrictions we impose on ourselves! And now it seems it’s not just the forbidden that tempts us, but even the out-of-the-ordinary things that help break the monotony of everyday life. The world of Adam and Eve was a spanking new one with untold treasures yet to be discovered; we live in a jaded world where anything out of the ordinary excites and rejuvenates while the ordinary, everyday stuff bores. And that’s how you have people like New York Congressman Anthony Weiner and Oscar winning film director Quentin Tarantino, who are in the news not for something as mundane as having an affair, but for acts that make fellow beings sit up -- somewhat in disgust, somewhat in amusement somewhat in wonder, and yes, even envy! While public personalities like golf legend Tiger Woods met their nemesis by having multiple affairs and IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn pounced on a hotel maid and N.D. Tiwari was caught with sex workers, nothing as ordinary would do for Weiner! He got his kick by tweeting sexually explicit photos and messages of himself in an aroused state to young girls before and during his marriage! Technically, he didn’t have an extra-marital affair but to most, what he did was somehow far worse! Not to be outdone in affaires extraordinaire, Tarantino has now hit the headlines with his toe fetish. An Indian girl has revealed how the talented filmmaker sucked on her toes while pleasuring himself. Most men, though they may jeer at Tarantino, would have been curious about and fascinated by his twinkle toe act! As Mark Oppenheimer writes in Huffington Post, “There was something not weird, but too familiar about Weiner. His style might not be for everyone (to put it politely), but the impulse to be something other than what we are in our daily, monogamous lives, the thrill that comes from the illicit rather than the predictable, is something I imagine many couples can identify with. With his online flirtations and soft-porn photos, he did what a lot of us might do if we were lonely and determined to not really cheat.” Defying the law, flouting traffic rules, drinking yourself senseless, destroying public property, ringing a bell and running away – all these activities seem so exciting when teenage hormones are raging. Unfortunately for some, those hormones never do quite settle down. And Mr Hyde is always waiting just a breath away to emerge and exhibit a vastly different persona and morality from that of Dr Jekyll. Everyone is faced with the same temptations at some point or the other, and all of us have a Mr Hyde lurking within us. The difference is that while some give in to forbidden pleasures and excitement, others consider repercussions and hold on steadfast against temptation. Minor temptations such as 10 minutes of extra sleep, chocolates, rich chocolate pastries or that extra helping of food cannot harm anyone as much as temptations that have the potential to turn into public scandals and take down loved ones along with us. The worst fear of succumbing to temptations is when you end up hurting loved ones or harming yourselves. One can never really know one’s vulnerability unless actually faced with temptation. Each of us knows our strengths and weaknesses in normal conditions; but it would help to consider what exactly we are capable of doing in our vulnerable moments.We have no idea what are our friends, colleagues and neighbours capable of doing in unusual circumstances? Do loneliness and depression lead us into doing things we would never do under normal conditions? What is the worst thing that the colleague seated in the next cabin has done? Has he sexted sexy pictures of himself to women? Is he a closet gay? Is he a stalker?! Or the friend you share lunch with every day. Do you know what she is up to when nobody observes her? After all would Weiner’s friends and relatives have ever suspected he was sexting lewd photographs of himself to young girls on social networking sites? It is only by unearthing the Hyde within us and understanding him that we can strengthen Jekyll to maintain his strength and will power under all circumstances. It is only by knowing the extent to which we can fall that we can determine and establish the heights we can reach. So go on, give in to the temptation of that extra 10 minutes of eye-shut …it may even help you keep Mr Hyde under check, lest greater temptations lead you astray…