Research shows that Malaysians love mobile-multitasking

Partnering with TNS Infratest who handled the research and analysis of this year’s edition of the report; a survey was held in over 50 countries around the world with 400,000 individual assessments conducted. Seemingly, Asia as a continent is showing a propensity to put aside their PCs to solely rely on their smartphones for their online needs – be it shopping, learning, searching and etc.

So Google being Google, they’re tasked to illustrate an image to show how people use the Internet – as quoted by MD SEA Sajith. Essentially, the research serves to encapsulate the behaviours of the world while connecting to their devices – these instances are dubbed “micro-moments” and so far they’re transcending markets in Asia.

How hooked are we? Well the insights show that 66% of all Asians own a smartphone, numbers that aren’t trumped by any other region; Americas and Europe are 60% each. Our neighbours down south (Singapore) sit high and mighty with 88%, the country with the fastest internet (South Korea) are at 83%, while Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia come in at 79%, 78% and 77% respectively – Malaysia’s percentile was at 71%.

Malaysia’s data shows some trends that might be worrying; to sum it up, Malaysians could be likely to have ADHD, or rather just find it hard to concentrate on one thing – in this case, device for a span of time. Coming in at number 2 thanks to logging a percentile of 91% Malaysia was only beaten by Indonesia (92%); numbers that show that both countries have individuals that use their smartphones while watching the TV. Numbers which implicate that these two nations are either:

Unable to concentrate on one device at a time
Prefer to have a multi-screening experience
Coming to terms that the TVs is slowly just becoming a big screen, just another avenue to view content

Then on, the data also shows that 36% of Malaysians only use their pocket companions and nothing else to surf the web – again number two, behind Thailand 37%. It seems that it could be that the portability of their smartphones are driving them away from tablets and computers.

Buying habits are now also being dictated through smartphones, although the numbers aren’t too high at 20%. Supplementing this data are more percentages that corroborate that e-commerce is still quite stagnant in the country.

51% of Malaysians prefer to do their groundwork on their purchases online but purchasing the actual item offline. The internet is helping them find out what they need and compare on the internet but knowing Asians, they still want to take a proper look at the thing they’re putting their money towards. Another interesting trend is that 48% of our citizens find out about products through online resources, first. E-commerce as an industry is still finding it hard to tackle the local consumer, but they’ll be happy to know that 30% of Malaysians are shopping online through other mediums (PCs, tablets, etc).

Top 5 Malaysian smartphone activities:
84% – use it to monitor their social media networks
79% – use it for search engines
78% – consume videos
58% – dig up info on a product
53% – play games / listen to music (draw)

Coming to a close, it’s no surprise that the majority of smartphone users come from Gen Y or younger (under 25; 93%) but these numbers are increasing in all age ranges. Some time during this article you’d probably compare yourself and decide if you fall within the majority; nevertheless, consumers could expect more content to be marketed based on these findings, so be prepared for interactive content that spreads across multiple-platforms.

For more info check out the online poll here.