Sales of smart phones growing fast in SE Asia

TWO out of three new mobile devices sold in Southeast Asia today are applicationrich, Internet-enabled smart phones, fueling the exponential surge in data services, Singapore-based research firm GFK Asia said.

The Philippines was noted as the fastest growing market, with the value of smart phones sold growing by 402 percent in the first quarter of 2012 over the same period in 2011.

“The smart phone revolution is in full swing,” GFK Asia digital technology account director Gerard Tan said in a statement on Thursday.

“In developing Southeast Asia where smart phone penetration is still nowhere near saturation levels, we can be sure that the current sales spurt will carry on for at least the next few years,” he said.

With much of the populace still not owning a mobile phone, there is no better place for global mobile phone brands to focus their sales and marketing efforts,” he said.

GFK Asia’s latest report surveyed Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indone- sia, Philippines, and Cambodia, where the smart phone sales grew by an average of 62 percent.

The size of the smart phone market in the Philippines, however, remains small compared to its neighbors.

Smart phone penetration in the country at the end of March was pegged at 29 percent, less than half the penetration rate in Indonesia.

The region’s most mature markets were Malaysia and Singapore, where penetration rates were at 90 percent for both countries.

“The largest smart phone market in this region expectedly is Indonesia which has a smart phone penetration rate of 62 percent and enjoyed sales exceeding $1.4 billion last quarter,” Tan said.

In an email to the Inquirer, GFK Asia said smart phone sales in the Philippines were at $265 million in the first quarter of the year.

For users in the region, GFK noted an increasing preference for touch devices like Apple’s iphone and countless other devices running on Google’s Android operating system, showing a shift in preference from the once-popular Blackberry devices sold by Canada’s Research In Motion.