Tech predictions for 2019

Shared some views on Bloomberg on the key technology trends to look out for in 2019.

Consumer trends in 2019

3 major consumer themes we will see:

• Ecommerce battle will intensify as we see growth continuing in the market ( 35% YoY growth wrt GMV in SE Asis alone)
• Overall Digital economy will accelerate ( Vehicle hailing/ Food delivery / Shared economy ) Payments – New payment models will evolve
• We will see more players creating their ecosystem – i.e integrating a Platform play beyond the core offerings

Details :

Trends in ecommerce

• Overall Volumes growth –

Ecommerce becomes mainstay in APAC esp. Se Asia. We expect a 35% + growth rate Y-O-Y in Ecommerce GMV with the market reaching more than 40 Bn USD.

• Factionalization into AAT group

Investments from big boys will accelerate .We already saw Alibaba increasing its stake in Lazada in last year .Tencent has already invested in a couple of companies like SEA (which went public last year), Go-jek . JD Thailand etc. Amazon entered the SE Asia market a bit late with Singapore and later Australia. We would expect them to get a bit aggressive with acquisitions to gain market share.

In 2019, as the players try to dominate we will see a bit more focus on Profitability.

The smaller players will struggle wrt Profitability. And increasingly we will see bit more consolidation from the AAT camp i.e Alibaba, Amazon and Tencent )

• Retail – Online convergence ( Omnichannel)

Traditional brick and mortar Retailers like Matahari (Indonesia), MBK (Thailand) will increase their Online presence significantly. At the same time, we will see Online brands like Pomelo, Lazada move into Retail to create Omni-channel experience.

Finance – Payments

• Aggressive Payments strategy – GrabPay, Go-Pay (Indonesia) , Alipay is getting aggressive in APAC. We will see Samsung getting a bit more aggressive as well.Take China’s WeChat Pay and Alipay, which now process $5.5 trillionof payments. Or India’s Unified Payments Interface, which makes it possible to transfer money between people within seconds — for no fee. This occurs bank to bank, provides customer support and security, and has little overhead. So there are better and simpler ways.
• Payment model will evolve – Payments will evolve with new Data analytics and services like SME lending based on Payment analysis .So Payment companies will get into areas like SME lending, Credit insurance for SMEs etc.
• P2P Lending platforms will emerge esp. in countries like Indonesia, Thailand etc.

Enterprise trends in 2018

• Cybersecurity – Increasing spend in Cyber security as escalation of new/sophisticated Cyber attacks
• Cloud – Public Cloud battle intensifies with AliCloud and Azure becoming aggressive
• Data Security and Privacy will have a big impact on Enterprise IT spending
• Data Analytics spending will accelerate ( 22% growth )

Details:

• Cybersecurity – Digital transformation has exposed a broad attack surface for would-be belligerents. The IoT is pushing “connect-first/secure-later” products to a range of industries, as well as critical infrastructure in APAC countries. Simultaneously, cyber risk is escalating as evidenced by increasingly sophisticated malware, record-breaking DDoS attacks, and politically motivated state-sponsored threat actors.

We will see more spending from APAC CIOs to protect the enterprise with overall Spending on Security services expected to increase over 25%. Also there will be convergence of Traditional and Cyber security spending happening.

• Cloud – While the Public Cloud will be an aggressive battle with AWS taking the lead . But in 2018 we Saw AliCloud and Azure trying to be a lot aggressive. As decision making evolves and Hybrid Cloud strategy becomes important for most enterprises, we will see emergence of System Integrators as the key decision influencers in APAC. Also, we will see new use cases for Edge Computing i.e the Computing is more and more on the edge of the networks in 2019

• Data security & Privacy – GDPR in Europe and we have APAC variants like Indonesia Regulation 82/OJK , Thailand , Malaysia tc all have some variants .Data security and privacy will be a big focus for regional regulators and we will see similar initiatives from other countries. Also, Hyperscalers will take a mixed approach. Building their own DCs in markets like SG, HK but looking at partnering or Wholesaling in man smaller/Domestic markets. Overall, Enterprise IT Spending will

• Data Analytics will also come into forefront as SMEs take the lead in spending for BD solutions esp. in verticals like Retail, Manufacturing etc.

Companies to watch out for

BAT – Baidu , Alibaba , Tencents

Shared economy  /Ecommerce –  Tokopedia , Grab, Lazada, Shopee

Other software / emerging players – Shopee , Stripe , ServiceNow, Automation anywhere etc.