Internet Day 2016: How digital content contributes to Internet economy

Under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC), and main sponsor VNG Company, the event emphasized that a digital economy is an inevitable step for development as the traditional economy is being saturated.

According to Mr Nguyen Thanh Hung, MoIC Deputy Minister, the wide application of information technology (IT) in all activities of a digital economy would bring high profits; some countries have defined the digital economy as a new developmental driving force for their socio-economic growth and development, as well as enhancing the national competitive capacity on a global scale.

In recent years, the digital content industry in Vietnam has seen remarkable development, playing a more important role in the country’s IT sector.

The revenue of the digital content industry increased from USD480 million to USD1.4 billion in the 2008-2014 period with a yearly growth rate of about 20%. The country’s digital content industry attracted more than 4,500 enterprises, creating 70,000 jobs.

Until now, Vietnam has built a diverse digital content industry, including online products for education, entertainment and content for mobile devices, Hung said.

Besides current search engines Google, Zalo, fb, zing.vn, some “marketable products” such as Lazada, tiki.vn, uber and grab taxi will continue become major trends of development.

During his speech, CEO VNG Le Hong Minh said that since 2010, the number of Internet users in Vietnam has rapidly increased, in which the trend of accessing the Internet via mobile devices surpasses PCs.

“For those under 25 years old, Internet means smart-phones rather than PCs. It is similar to the case of changing from black and white television to color television.”

Mr Nguyen Thanh Hung, MoIC Deputy Minister spoke at the event

Mr Hong Minh also considered the high potential for development of Online to Offline (O2O), such as food and beverage, online car booking, online chatting, and health care solutions.

The Deputy Minister said that the digital economy would create favorable conditions to boost and develop the digital content industry to become a key sector of the country’s IT industry.

With advantages such as young human resources, competitive labor costs, a sharp increase in smart-phones and 3G subscriptions and a developing Internet infrastructure, Vietnam was evaluated as a high potential market for the digital industry.

From now to 2020, the ratio of smart-phone users is estimated to reach 30 times what it was in 2010, accounting for 60% of the population (60 million users), while the PC market will see 15 million users. Therefore, the opportunities for mobile Internet will be 40-100 times higher than with PC Internet

In Southeast Asia, the number is expected to reach 200 million in 2016 and 300 million in 2020.

However, Deputy Minister Hung emphasised that the result was not proportional with the country’s potential, as digital content revenue remained modest compared to the whole IT sector’s income.

To illustrate the development of mobile Internet, Mr Minh, 39, gave statistics of the development of mobile games (40%), m-commerce (60%) and mobile payments (80%).

Internet Day is an annual event initiated by the VIA, creating a good forum for enterprises operating in the Internet field, association members, domestic and international technology companies, government representatives and state management agencies to meet, exchange and share experiences to develop the Internet, and accelerate application, content and technology services./.