The proliferation of mobile devices has opened up new possibilities for information, entertainment and communication and understanding of these trends will assist marketers and advertisers in integrating traditional and digital platform strategies to reach and better target the Asian elites.
The 2008 Pan Asia-Pacific Cross Media survey (PAX) found that affluent Taiwanese were the region’s most avid information seekers, using their mobile devices to read news alerts and updates as well as to source for financial and business information.
The Synovate PAX study tracks the influence and media consumption patterns of affluent Asians, typically the top 20% based on monthly household income, across the Asia Pacific region – comprising Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, India, Australia and Japan.
The survey found that 56% of affluent Asians use their mobile devices every week to take pictures while 31% watched video clips through their mobile phones, PDAs, BlackBerrys, smart phones and portable media players.
Hong Kongers are the most mobile-savvy across the region. Wealthy Hong Kong residents are the highest users of mobile applications such as video messaging, file exchange via Bluetooth or Infrared and moblogs in Asia.
They also ranked as the most likely to use high-tech video-messaging functions on their mobile phones, with 31% of respondents saying they had sent or received video messages in the past month, compared with 23% of Malaysians in Kuala Lumpur, 18% of Singaporeans and 4% of people in Melbourne and Sydney.
Email tops the HongKongers’ list of popular activities carried out via computer or mobile device, followed by searching for information on products or services (86%), reading news alerts and updates (86%) and reading newspapers and magazines online (82%).
75% of affluent Hong Kongers watch video clips on a shared site (regional average is 62%) and over half enjoy playing video games (regional average is 38%). Busy networking HongKongers spend more than 8 hours a week on instant messaging, two hours more than the regional average.
Average hours of weekly media consumption in a typical week
(Mean hours of media consumption time by affluent Hong Kong consumers)
Phone users in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur are Asia’s most prolific text messagers, the Synovate survey found. More than 97% of mobile phone users in Singapore have sent text messages in the past month, followed by 96% of people in Kuala Lumpur and 94% of people in Seoul.
More than 87% of people in Melbourne and Sydney said they had sent texts in the past month while the region’s lowest rate of text messaging were recorded by Hong Kong (85%) and Bangkok (69%).
The Taiwanese also lead the way when it comes to chatting and instant messaging on the go. People in Taipei were most likely to use their mobile phones to play games with 59% of respondents doing so in the past month, followed by people in Seoul (56%) and Singapore (53%).
Affluent Thais (57%) were the most likely across the region to watch live TV on their mobile devices followed by Taiwanese (53%), Koreans (50%) and Singaporeans (37%).
