Southeast Asia Local Mobile Applications Developer Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges

This IDC study discusses the top applications (based on number of downloads) of some of the application developers focusing on smartphone platforms in Southeast Asia (SEA), in particular, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The applications in consideration are local content applications, hence targeting local users. The study helps us get a grip on some of the trends around local applications and the main challenges that subsequently emerge for the application developers. It provides a snapshot of the mobile application development (AD) in the region, focusing on revenue generated, downloads clocked, platforms used for development, and application localization, as well as marketing and promotional activities. The users for these applications are consumers and not enterprise users. The study makes some recommendations to major application storefront owners to help overcome some of these challenges to gain developer mindshare and support.

"The key to success for these developers lies in building robust applications with locally sensitive content for entertainment, news, and social networking, and then scale them up regionally to increase their target audience and revenue generation capabilities," says Kiranjeet Kaur, market analyst, Client Devices IDC Asia/Pacific.