The study was conducted across six countries – Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. The most important reason for this surge in usage of the internet is the increasing accessibility to broadband networks through Wi-Fi services, smartphones and other gadgets such as tablets, in addition to the continuing proliferation of traditional PCs in the region.

Users in Singapore were found to use the Internet the most among these countries, averaging about 25 hours per week. Among the other countries surveyed, Indonesians use the Internet the least, clocking an average of just 14 hours per week.

Time spent online in Southeast Asia

While PCs (desktops as well as laptops) continue to be used, devices such as smartphones and tablets are starting to cut into their market share. In Indonesia, 78% of users have got Internet-capable mobile phones as compared to just 29 percent who owned notebook computers or 31 percent with desktops.

While communicating through email is the most popular activity in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand, users in Vietnam and Indonesia were more interested in accessing the news. Social networks are also becoming quite popular in this region and expectedly Facebook is the dominant network here too. YouTube is also among the top 5 sites visited in these countries.

Consumers in the region are also taking an interest in communicating with various brands online and often use the Internet to make decisions before purchasing any item. They also tend to post their own reviews later.

However, online advertising is still not a very popular medium of communication in this region. However, with the increasing use of the Internet, online marketers should concentrate on this region as it can only be good for them in the long run.

Melanie Ingrey, Nielsen’s research director for the APMEA region says, “Online activity is only going to increase in the years ahead as more consumers obtain smartphones, and 3G and broadband access become more common and affordable.”

The study was conducted across a sample of over 4,200 people in 6 countries across the Asia-Pacific region. The countries were Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan.

Pre-family men are an important user base because they have good amount of purchasing power as well as influence and they are also quite knowledgeable about technological developments. This demographic in the market is also on the rise as the average age at which a man marries is on the rise.

Targeting this audience when marketing and advertising online requires an understanding of how these men think and what their preferences are with regards to the use of different gadgets such as laptops, PCs, smartphones etc. It is also necessary to know what content they are most likely to access and how and when that may be.

It was found that these men are most likely to use laptops (40%) and PCs (35%) for social networking, as also for important emails and business transactions. On the other hand, the mobile phone is used only 20% of the time for such activity.

In contrast, when this demographic play games, they are about twice as likely to make use of smartphones and desktop browsers (56%). Home consoles and portable game consoles are used only 35% and 33% respectively for gaming. Price and social connectivity are the likely reasons for this.

Uunmarried men in the region browse through information regarding news, entertainment and people most frequently.

According to him, marketing in a place like Asia is very different from marketing in the U.S. While the U.S. market is reasonably homogenous, there are a lot of differences across the Asian market.

Hence advertising in the U.S. is relatively easy, as the culture and values of the people there are similar.

On the other hand, the culture varies widely in the Asian region. Over 2,000 languages are spoken in this part of the world, and hence one has to keep all these factors in mind while preparing an ad campaign for this region.

He further explains that the arrival of mobile technology has brought about a common thread across these different cultures. Hence it is essential to make optimum use of this technology while marketing any product or service, as it can truly connect the consumers across different regions and cultures.

He says, “Start with consumers, start with categories, I see a lot of great work where people just don’t have the opportunity to use a kind of “vanilla” view and so they get into category-specific details, sharing some great use of creativity out there.”

If marketers keep these tips in mind, they are sure to be able to improve their campaign performance and will reap rich benefits in due course.

A study conducted by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) shows that piracy affects the Australian economy to the tune of Australian $1.37 billion a year.

The direct losses due to piracy were to the extent of $A575 million including $A225 million for “secondary piracy”, where users borrow pirated products from others. The study also claims that the piracy resulted in the loss of about 6,100 jobs and reduced spending on recreation, clothing housing etc.

Other related businesses, such as cinema owners, local distributors, producers and retailers also lose income due to the piracy. The government also lost taxes to the extent of $A193 million.

It was largely felt that piracy was detrimental and damaging not only to the movie industry but also to the whole Australian economy, and hence it was believed to be imperative to start educating people about the issue immediately.

However, the Internet advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) believes that the report will not be particularly effective in discouraging piracy. They suggest, instead, that the AFACT should concentrate on providing tools through which users can easily and legally download movies, instead of having to resort to illegal means.

In the entire Asia pacific region, social media has started affecting the buying decisions of users in a significant manner.

Online product reviews have become very popular and are next in line only to recommendations by family and friends. Products such as consumer electronics, cosmetics and cars are frequently reviewed here.

Interestingly however, different countries vary greatly in the way they share reviews. While the Koreans are most likely to post positive reviews the Chinese are most likely to post negative reviews of any product.

The report also shows that blogging is most popular in Japan, with over 1 million blogs being posted there every month. Twitter which had only about 200,000 users in Japan last year now has over 10 million users, which is 16% of the Japanese Internet population.

In China more than 80% of social media content is through bulletin boards, and new comers indulge in social gaming while the more experienced tend to share content. Virtual product placement in social gaming is very popular and social media celebrities like Sister Phoenix and Mr. Yuan are more popular than real celebrities.

Though Orkut is the most popular social network in India, Facebook is fast gaining in popularity. Twitter is also growing very fast and over 57% OF Twitter users in India, have joined in during the last year. Online product reviews are also very popular here.

In Korea, 95% of the Internet population accesses their social site Naver every month. The elections in June also saw the growth of mobile social media.

Australia has the highest global average for time spent on social media with users spending over 7 hours per month. Activities relating to sports and parenting are frequently discussed here. LinkedIn has also grown in popularity by 99% in the last year.

The new service can be accessed at:

0.facebook.com/

While the service is similar to Facebook mobile in most respects, it will not include photos on the site. Photographs will be just one click away, but users will be charged for accessing them at the regular data rates.

Other than viewing pictures, users will be able to carry on most of the regular activities they do on Facebook such as updating their status, viewing news feeds, posting comments and writing on a friend’s wall etc.

0.facebook.com has been created with the aim of overcoming two of the major obstacles of using social networks through mobile handsets: the speed (or lack) of using social sites on a mobile device and the cost of accessing such media-rich services on uncapped mobile data plans.

Facebook has partnered with mobile operators to deliver this service. Users will not pay any data charges to access this service. They will only be charged the regular data tariffs if they wish to view a photo or if they wish to move away from 0.facebook to browse another site. In both cases, they will receive a notification informing them that they will be charged for doing so.

Initially, 0.facebook will be available only in 45 developing countries and territories in collaboration with over 50 mobile operators. The service will be introduced in a few more places shortly.

Facebook already has over 100 million active mobile users with over 200 mobile operators spread across 80 countries. With this move they are sure to expand their reach even further.

In terms of actual numbers, that is 240.3 million unique visitors to social networks.

Among all the networks, Facebook held the top spot in most of the countries in the region, with a few exceptions such as India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Users spent an average of 2.5 hours each on the social networks in the course of the month, and each visitor accessed a social network about 15 times in the month.

The Philippines was found to lead the way for social network penetration, with 90% of its online population visiting social networks in February 2010. They were closely followed by Australia, which has 89.6% penetration and Indonesia, which had 88.6% penetration.

It was also found that the Philippines had the highest level of engagement, with an average of 5.5 hours and 26 visits per user. Indonesia had an average of 5.4 hours and 22 visits per user. Australia had 3.8 hours and 20 visits per user. Malaysia had nearly 3.8 hours and 22 visits per user.

Facebook was the most popular social network in places like the Philippines (84.5% market share), Australia (69.4%), Indonesia (84.9%), Malaysia (77.5%), Singapore (72.1%), New Zealand (63.6%), Hong Kong (62.6%) and Vietnam (18.4%).

In other markets, several other networks had the lead. In India, Orkut was the leader with 46.8%. Wretch.cc in Taiwan commands 62.5%, CyWorld in South Korea has 54.2% and Mixi.jp has 18.9% of the Japanese market share.

O3b stands for the ‘Other 3 Billion’ who do not live in Western society and do not enjoy the wonders of mobile and Internet technology. The O3bnetwork will be able to provide Internet connectivity to developing nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East at high speed and low costs.

In its present form, the Internet is mainly accessible in developed nations thanks to an extensive network of submarine fiber optic cables, which work out to be very cost-effective once they are laid. In place where these fiber optic cables are unavailable, there are geo-synchronous satellites that can be used to connect to the Internet, but they provide very slow connectivity and are also very expensive, thus making Internet access unaffordable for most people in developing countries.

The new O3b system will provide fiber-like Internet services, by means of several medium-orbit satellites. In its initial phase, O3b will have a constellation of 16 satellites, providing low latency links ranging from 1Mbps to 10Gbps. These satellites will make it possible to access the Internet at high speeds with low latency, thus making it possible to quickly disseminate information even to the remotest of places such as the interiors of Africa, at reasonably low rates.

O3b satellites will be positioned around the earth, at almost one-third the distance of the geo-synchronous satellites, thus improving the connectivity and transmission times.

Backers Google, Liberty Global and HSBC have collectively contributed U.S. $60 million to O3b Networks. It is estimated that the O3b satellites will be functional by the end of 2010, making Internet access faster, cheaper and easier. This in turn will encourage upcoming market operators and internet service providers to improve the overall internet experience. For details please visit:

http://www.o3bnetworks.com/