Digital 2012: Asia Regional Overview

Asia's digital landscape continues to evolve at an astonishing rate in October 2012:

• There are now well over 1 billion internet users around Asia;

• At least 811 million of these people use social media;

• 50% of the world's social media users are in Asia;

• More than 10 million new people in Asia join Facebook every month;

• Asia is home to more than 3 billion mobile subscriptions.

All of these numbers are significantly higher than those we reported in our 2011 reports:

• The number of internet users in the region has grown by almost 14%;

• Users of the top social network in each country around Asia have increased by more than 8%;

• Mobile subscriptions have seen growth of more than 12%.

It's not just the growth in user numbers that’s impressive, however; netizens in Asia spend almost 2 million years of combined time on the internet every month, watching almost 45 billion online videos.

That's more than half a trillion videos every year.

We also noted a continuing trend towards diversity in behaviour around the region.

Despite becoming Facebook's biggest region just a few weeks ago*, the world's favourite social network ranks just 4th in Asia by user figures. However, Buddy Media found that Facebook is still the platform of choice for brands around the region, with almost 9 in 10 Asian companies giving it a 'Like'. They also report that two thirds of Asian companies on social media have a presence on Twitter.

Most companies focus the majority of their social media efforts on marketing, but figures suggest an increasing number of Asian brands are adopting social media for customer service purposes too.

Meanwhile, the mobile opportunity is becoming increasingly important around Asia too, with 4 in 5 companies in the region stating that mobile social is "an important part" of their overall strategy.

Be sure to check out the full report in the embed above for many more insights, or click here to download a free PDF of the complete report (you may need to sign in to SlideShare first).

You'll find the source for all the stats above at the bottom of the relevant slides inside the report itself. *Note that the countries included in SocialBakers's classification of 'Asia' differs to the one used in our SDMW reports, so figures may not correlate between these reports.

This article first appeared on the We Are Social Blog.