Technology
Southeast Asia: An Emerging Market With Booming Digital Growth
Southeast Asia: An Emerging Market With Digital Growth Potential
When it comes to economic growth in Asia, the focus often falls on China.
However, while China’s story is continually staggering in its scale, the Chinese economic powerhouse is only a part of a much wider story in Asia.
Just like China, rapidly-growing countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and The Philippines are also seeing their economies transform in meaningful ways – and Southeast Asia as a whole is becoming one of the most exciting regions for technological adoption, foreign investment, and digital innovation in the world.
Today’s infographic comes to us from Sea, and it helps shed some light on the digital wave that’s powering the growth across a geographically expansive and tremendously diverse region.
A Digitizing Economy
With a younger population, growing affluence, and people that are increasingly tech-savvy, the internet population in Southeast Asia is expected to swell from 260 million to 480 million between 2015 and 2020.
More and more business is being done online in the region – and as a result, it is estimated that by 2025, the digital economy in Southeast Asian countries will be worth a hefty $197 billion.
That’s an impressive 640% increase over the size just a decade prior.
Sectors to Watch
Which parts of the digital economy will see the most impact?
According to proprietary data from Google and investment company Temasek, the most interesting sectors to watch in the region should be in e-commerce, digital entertainment, online travel, and digital financial services.
Est. growth in market size (%) between 2016-2021 | |||
---|---|---|---|
Greater Southeast Asia | U.S. | China | |
E-commerce | 261% | 23% | 196% |
Digital entertainment | 145% | n/a | 54% |
Online travel | 90% | 15% | 172% |
E-commerce, which is expected to grow by 261% between 2016 and 2021, is one of the region’s most explosive sectors. With a lack of physical retail stores and limited choice of goods in Southeast Asia, rapidly-growing access to the internet provides a new means for people to shop.
Further, the travel and transportation market is also expected to boom with a 90% increase by 2021, and this will be driven by growing ridership in taxi-on-demand services. The area will also see its digital entertainment sector – defined as the combined mobile and PC gaming markets – grow at nearly triple the pace of China over the coming years (145% vs 54%).
Lastly, mobile payments is another sector to watch, as tech enables Southeast Asians to “leapfrog” traditional payment technologies like physical bank or credit cards. By 2021, mobile payments will have a 43% market share in the region.
Technology
Visualizing AI Patents by Country
See which countries have been granted the most AI patents each year, from 2012 to 2022.
Visualizing AI Patents by Country
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
This infographic shows the number of AI-related patents granted each year from 2010 to 2022 (latest data available). These figures come from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), accessed via Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report.
From this data, we can see that China first overtook the U.S. in 2013. Since then, the country has seen enormous growth in the number of AI patents granted each year.
Year | China | EU and UK | U.S. | RoW | Global Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | 307 | 137 | 984 | 571 | 1,999 |
2011 | 516 | 129 | 980 | 581 | 2,206 |
2012 | 926 | 112 | 950 | 660 | 2,648 |
2013 | 1,035 | 91 | 970 | 627 | 2,723 |
2014 | 1,278 | 97 | 1,078 | 667 | 3,120 |
2015 | 1,721 | 110 | 1,135 | 539 | 3,505 |
2016 | 1,621 | 128 | 1,298 | 714 | 3,761 |
2017 | 2,428 | 144 | 1,489 | 1,075 | 5,136 |
2018 | 4,741 | 155 | 1,674 | 1,574 | 8,144 |
2019 | 9,530 | 322 | 3,211 | 2,720 | 15,783 |
2020 | 13,071 | 406 | 5,441 | 4,455 | 23,373 |
2021 | 21,907 | 623 | 8,219 | 7,519 | 38,268 |
2022 | 35,315 | 1,173 | 12,077 | 13,699 | 62,264 |
In 2022, China was granted more patents than every other country combined.
While this suggests that the country is very active in researching the field of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that China is the farthest in terms of capability.
Key Facts About AI Patents
According to CSET, AI patents relate to mathematical relationships and algorithms, which are considered abstract ideas under patent law. They can also have different meaning, depending on where they are filed.
In the U.S., AI patenting is concentrated amongst large companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google. On the other hand, AI patenting in China is more distributed across government organizations, universities, and tech firms (e.g. Tencent).
In terms of focus area, China’s patents are typically related to computer vision, a field of AI that enables computers and systems to interpret visual data and inputs. Meanwhile America’s efforts are more evenly distributed across research fields.
Learn More About AI From Visual Capitalist
If you want to see more data visualizations on artificial intelligence, check out this graphic that shows which job departments will be impacted by AI the most.
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