Coming from a foreign country whose rate of digital evolution moves slower than Malaysia I realized that many people I talk to in Malaysia end up being surprised when I tell them that Malaysians are more tech savy than Croatians. I know for a fact that older generations in Malaysia would know how to use most of the facebook features whereas older generations in Croatia would not even know how to pronounce the word ‘facebook’ properly.
One of the first things I noticed while using public transport in Kuala Lumpur was that everybody I saw in the train or bus had an interesting body shape. Head bent, arms holding a smartphone and eyes intensely locked to it. People looked pretty much like hooks. Coming from a quite an open and communicative culture I realized it was hard to make friends from spontaneous conversations on the streets with random people in Malaysia because everybody is so occupied with these gadgets and devices in their hands. I’m not sayin that is right or wrong, it’s just the way it is, and who am I to judge?
But then I bumped into some interesting statistics and a lot of things started making sense. According to last years global overview about digital habits in 2016 done by we are social, we got some interesting insight about Malaysian digital savviness. Let’s check it out in the infographic below:
Interpretation of the data as seen from LAVA
There are 3 stats that I found most interesting about Malaysian digital trends. Let’s just list them down:
- 71% Of Malaysian Population own a Smartphone (Data from the original research from we are social)
- 68% Of Malaysian total population are internet users
- 59% Of Malaysian total population are mobile internet users
As much as my personal obervation as a foreigner told me, these 3 stats can tell us a lot about the digital trends in Malaysia and how people are reacting to it. All you basically need is to look up while commuting in any public transport available whether you are in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, or Johor.
What Roomz.asia is trying to do is simply adjust to these trends and make sure that what we have to offer is suitable to the community it came from. Building an app to conquer the room rental practice means we are on the good way to adjust to the growing digital and tech savy population in Malaysia.
For the end a little reality check video:
