PH Internet audience growth fastest in Southeast Asia

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines has the fastest growing Internet audience in Southeast Asia. The number of online users jumped 22% from March 2012 to March 2013, according to the Southeast Asia Digital Future in Focus 2013 report by internet analytics company comScore.

The report, published on July 26, showed a number of trends in regional web use.

Youngsters driving growth. The majority of online users in Southeast Asia’s emerging Internet markets are under the age of 35. In the Philippines alone, 71% of the Internet audience is between the ages of 15 and 34.

Social networking is king. The largest share of personal computing time in the region is spent on social networking. Nowhere is that more true than in the Philippines, where 41.5% of the total minutes users spent online was on social networks. comScore also credits the Philippines with having the second highest Facebook penetration rate in the world at 92.2%. That’s just a fraction lower than Brazil’s 92.6% Facebook reach.

Online video on the rise. Online video viewers in Southeast Asia have grown steadily in the past year and now number 42 million. Not surprisingly, Vietnam, which has the largest online population, also has the greatest number of video viewers. But the Philippines leads the pack in terms of growth with an 18-percent increase in video viewers year-on-year.

News reach varies dramatically. Singapore had the highest rate of information and news reach, 92.3%. But online users in Vietnam spent the most time looking at news. The Philippines lagged in the region with the lowest news reach at 50% of the population.

Users migrating to mobile. Each month the percentage of people accessing Internet from their tablets and mobile phones is increasing. In September of 2012, at least 15.4% of traffic came from sources outside of personal computers. Just 6 months later, that non-PC traffic has swelled to 20.9%.

The report shows Southeast Asians are increasingly living their lives online, on more platforms and in more social spaces.

And it looks like full steam ahead for the Philippines, which lags behind its neighbors in terms of number of web users, but is racing into the online space at one of the fastest speeds. – Rappler.com