Malaysians and Thais love their mobile phones

Puteri Sabira

 | August 22, 2014

A Telenor Group study shows Malaysians and Thais are among the world’s most mobile Internet-hungry.

KUALA LUMPUR: A Telenor Group study has revealed that young mobile Internet users in Malaysia and Thailand are among the most smartphone-savvy in the world.

Known as ‘digital frontrunners’, with ages ranging from 16-35 years old, this group was found to rely on their mobile phones for an unexpectedly wide variety of connectivity needs.

Sigve Brekke, Telenor Group EVP and Head of Asia Operations said, “The progress we are seeing in the adoption of the latest mobile applications in the Southeast Asian market is rapid.”

The study included over 2,600 people in Malaysia, Thailand, Sweden and Norway.

Despite Malaysia’s and Thailand’s ICT infrastructure not being nearly as mature as that of Norway’s or Sweden’s, Malaysians and Thais still beat their peers when it comes to using more communication platforms.

The study also revealed that this trend meant there was massive business development potential in Southeast Asia in the arena of mobile communications technology.

“This indicates to us that the opportunities for sustained growth in the mobile technology space in these markets may be bigger than we expected,” Sigve explained.

The study also revealed that 81 per cent of Malaysians and Thais used chat apps for daily communication with WhatsApp and WeChat being the favourites in Malaysia while Line and Facebook messenger were preferred among the Thais.

He is 20, going on millions

Report from My Paper (Singapore) dated 18 August 2014 :-

He is 20, going on millions


MAKING WAVES: Mr Guay is still in university, but his digital marketing agency is already worth more than half-a-million dollars.

SINGAPORE - When you are 20 years old, you usually depend on your parents to pay your university fees and give you pocket money.

Nickson Guay is on scholarship at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and runs - with a team of seven - his own company, worth more than half-a-million dollars.

If you do try your hand at business at 20, there's a good chance that your parents are bankrolling it.

Mr Guay was nine years old when his father was bankrupted, and he lived on between $2 and $5 a day for most of his school years.

When you are 20, you wear T-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

That's the only aspect in which Mr Guay acts his age.

He looks every inch a university student.

Last year, he founded digital marketing agency Marketlight with a start-up capital of $25,000.

Now it's worth 20 times that amount.

The agency specialises in helping its clients grow their business using social media, search-engine optimisation and content marketing.

The money is a welcome change from his tough early days, when the family had to scrimp to get by.

 Worse still, his parents divorced when he was 18.

"I was afraid that I would not have enough money to pay my university tuition fees...and started to think about how people became millionaires at such a young age," he said.

While his friends were enjoying life before national service (NS) and university by clubbing and travelling,

Mr Guay attended multiple networking sessions and started reading voraciously on entrepreneurship.

He did not think he was losing out, though. "I think going to parties is a waste of time. It distracts you from making an impact," said the young chief executive.

Success didn't come immediately for Mr Guay.

 "After struggling through hundreds of meetings, four lousy business plans and two failed product demonstrations, and losing 90 per cent of my hard-earned money overnight,

I was finally on the route to success," he said.

He was still serving his NS when, with some financial help from an investor, he launched Marketlight.

"I gained special permission from my superiors to run my business during NS, but agreed to focus on NS as my main duty," said Mr Guay.

After completing his duties, he would call his team in the evenings. For the first nine months, he didn't pay himself. "I had to pay my employees and other costs...I had only my NS allowance to depend on," he said.

His hard work paid off when property agents took notice of Marketlight and tapped on it to widen their reach online.

Even Temasek's Vertex Venture Holdings took an interest in the business, but Mr Guay declined its investment.

"We are still growing and are not ready for such a partnership at this point in time.

We will be raising money at the end of the year," he said.

He does, however, have plans for Marketlight to earn $3 million in revenue by the end of next year, and to launch a second tech start-up.

"I want to be the first Singaporean to create a billion-dollar tech start-up...my main purpose in life is to contribute something important to the world. Nothing else really matters."



 

World's top 10 youngest billionaires in 2014

Report from China Daily / Asia News Network dated 14 August 2014 :-

World's top 10 youngest billionaires in 2014


Upper (left to right): Mark Zuckerberg, Scott Duncan, Fahd Hariri, Albert Von Thurn und Taxis. Lower (left to right): Drew Houston, Perenna Kei & family, Eduardo Saverin

According to the Forbes Billionaires list in 2014, 31 of the 1,645 members are under the age of 40.

That elite group no longer includes Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page as both of whom have crossed into their 40's.

This year, there's a newcomer to the list - Perenna Kei who displaces former Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz as the youngest billionaire.

Let's take a look at the top 10 youngest billionaires in the world in 2014, according to Forbes.com.

No 10: Fahd Hariri
Age: 33 Net Worth: $1.2 billion Fahd Hariri is the youngest son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He graduated from the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture de Paris in 2004.

No 9: Yang Huiyan
Age: 32 Net Worth: $6.9 billion As China's richest woman, she is vice chairman of real estate developer Country Garden.

No 8: Eduardo Saverin
Age: 31 Net Worth: $4.1 billion As Facebook cofounder, he rarely makes media appearances and now spends his time as an angel investor.

No 7: Scott Duncan
Age: 31 Net Worth: $6.3 billion As one of Texas' most eligible bachelors, he is $1.2 billion richer than a year ago thanks to a rise in the stock price of Enterprise Products Partners and a generous dividend plan.

No 6: Albert von Thurn und Taxis
Age: 30 Net Worth: $3.8 billion His assets include real estate, art and 36,000 hectares of woodland in Germany, one of the largest forest holdings in Europe.

No 5: Drew Houston
Age: 30 Net Worth: $1.2 billion Dropbox cofounder and CEO Drew Houston is Silicon Valley's newest billionaire after his San Francisco-based tech company raised a new round of funding in January valued just under $10 billion.

No 4: Anton Kathrein, Jr
Age: 29 Net Worth: $1.35 billion Anton Kathrein, Jr. is the third generation to lead his family's Kathrein-Werke AG, "the oldest and largest antenna manufacturer in the world," according to the company's website

No 3: Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 29
Net Worth: $28.5 billion
Zuckerberg's net worth is set to more than double as Facebook's shares are up more than 130 per cent over the past year as of mid-February.

No 2: Dustin Moskovitz
Age: 29
Net Worth: $6.8 billion
Mark Zuckerberg's former roommate and cofounder of Facebook, Moskovitz left the social network in 2008 to start Asana, a software company.

No 1: Perenna Kei & family
Age: 24
Net Worth: $1.3 billion
Kei has an 85 per cent stake in Logan Property Holdings through different companies and a family trust.