IN line with POCO’s bid to provide mobile consumers with the ideal products that meet their daily needs, the young independent brand born from the Xiaomi Corporation held the POCO Partners Southeast Asia Forum 2023 last August 21 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Present at the forum, held in W Hotel Bangkok, were industry experts from across POCO business partnerships gathered with regional and local media in Bangkok to provide their insights into the evolving nature of the habits and preferences of Southeast Asia’s Gen Z mobile users.
The POCO Partners Southeast Asia Forum 2023 provided a significant opportunity to explore the rapidly changing consumer environment driven by the evolving usage and preferences of the region’s “mobile first” Gen Z generation.
POCO is a consumer technology brand based on the philosophy of “Everything you need, nothing you don’t.” It focuses primarily on its fans’ requirements and feedback. It’s on the relentless pursuit of technology, which its fans truly need, thus democratizing decision-making and continuous product updates to evolve itself.
During the forum, POCO Global heads, namely Quanxin Wang, General Manager of Xiaomi Southeast Asia, Anne Wang, Head of Marketing at POCO Global, and Angus Ng, Head of Product Marketing at POCO Global, discussed the evolving tech trends and data-driven insights in e-commerce, gaming, chipset, and smartphone markets in Southeast Asian countries with their stakeholders and top executives from Lazada, MediaTek, PUBG, Shopee, and TikTok Shop.
The survey covered 2,500 consumers targeting Gen Z and Millennials in five Southeast Asian markets, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, who play games on their mobile devices at least once a month. The study showed how mobile became the go-to platform for younger Southeast Asian users for entertainment due to the recent pandemic. It also tackled how mobile activities have dramatically increased over the last three years, with surges in mobile gaming (53 percent), online shopping (51 percent), and video streaming (48 percent) activities.
Due to their affinity with technology, the data from the survey showed how Gen Z spends more hours engaged in mobile activities. They spend more hours per week than their Millennial counterparts for all online leisure activities, such as messaging and social media interactions, and intend to spend even more time on their mobiles soon.
“For smartphones that are designed for Gen Z, I’d say they’re all about being seamless. Gen Z is used to using mobile devices, and they want phones that make everything online easy. This includes things like having engaging interactions with one another, sharing fun moments or playing exciting games within their community, or keeping track of their health and knowing ways to improve their lifestyle,” said Liang Shuang, Head of Shopee Regional Electronic Cluster.
With these shifting usage trends, consumers are also rethinking their choice of mobile devices. An overwhelming majority agreed that compared to five years ago, they now have a preference for a mid-range brand phone over the bigger, more established brands.
“The overall conclusion of today’s Forum is that clearly, a phone’s gaming capability, balanced by affordable price-points, is setting the agenda, led by the next generation of young consumers, to change the consumer game-play in widening the brand playing field,” explained Ng.