Digital Reporter
Robert A. Vergara Jr.
The Philippines is among the countries from where tech giant Google sees its next billion users emerging.
Google’s seven products, namely Gmail, Android, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Search, Youtube, and Google Play Store, currently have more than a billion users each. And the company seeks to have the same engagement with its recently‑launched data management app Datally.
“When you look at where the future growth would be, we realize that the next generation of people who will come online will come from emerging countries,” Kenneth Lingan, head of Google Philippines, said during the launch of Datally on Nov. 28 at the company’s local headquarter in BGC, Taguig City.
These countries, he said, include Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, India, and the Philippines, among others.
“This is really exciting thing for us because we know that the future growth would come from [these regions]. These countries come from different regions around the world, but what is amazing is the fact that a lot of these countries have similar fundamentals especially with the way they engage [with] the internet,” he added.
However, Lingan said users from the said countries, which the company calls NBU, are “mobile‑only,” which is a “threat” that results in some other challenges.
“[For] most of us here the first experience of the internet would probably come from a desktop or a laptop, but for most of the NBU, they’re coming from an experience where [their] only entry point to the internet is their mobile phones. It’s not mobile first, in fact in most cases, it’s mobile‑only,” he said.
A large number of these users, according to him, use lower‑end smart phones that “have limitations in terms of power, memory, and capability.” They also encounter challenges in internet connectivity that are “very expensive or sometimes not good enough and not fast enough.”
He added that these users also fail to find “locally‑relevant contents” in their countries.
“The realization for us [at] Google Philippines is the fact that the NBU should not just have different internet from what we enjoy, the first billion users enjoy; it just means that we need to develop a diff ecosystem that is really suitable to their needs and acknowledging the unique needs that they have,” he said.
Mobile data usage surging in Philippines
In the Philippines alone, Lingan said the booming number of Filipino internet users is “truly remarkable.”
“I joined Google three years back and at that time there were less than 45 million people online, today there are more than 60 million online and we’re almost close to half a million people going online every single month. That’s really amazing,” he said, citing Google’s internal statistics.
From January 2016 to January 2017, the number of Filipinos who use internet grew by 27% or 13 million to about 60 million users, based on a report by social media agency We Are Social.
Along with this growth is the booming number of Filipinos who access the internet through their mobile devices. In fact, Google projected a 16% year‑on‑year increase in mobile usage in the country this year.
“That means that there are many more millions of Filipinos who are going online for the first time through their mobile devices. And it opens a lot of opportunities,” he said, adding that smartphones have become “the big game changer.”
According to Lingan, these statistics are evident in Google’s products. Mobile searches through Google Search has increased by 30% year‑on‑year while YouTube’s mobile watchtime also rose by 95% this 2017.
Gabby Roxas, marketing manager of Google Philippines, echoes the same sentiment.
But despite this growth, managing mobile data remains to be a struggle for many Filipinos, Roxas said. This is a problem that Google seeks to address with the launch of Datally.
READ: How the new Datally app will help you manage your mobile data usage
Citing previous studies conducted by Google Philippines, Roxas said lack of data is the second reason “why Filipinos avoid trying out new apps on their mobile devices.”
“The challenge is do we really understand how much of our data is going to get used up based on what you want to do online? That’s where it can get confusing,” he explained.
Filipinos also struggle in controlling their data usage as many get engrossed with the experience in using apps without minding the amount of data they consume.
“They get engrossed with the experience, then they realize that they need to check how much data they have left. Typically, once they find out how much load or balance they have left, chances are they will restrict their usage because there really is a fear, that they don’t want to use up all their data and get disconnected,” he said.
Despite the internet seemingly becoming a necessity of many Filipinos, mobile data remains expensive.
“If you just look at, say, the most popular pack that is ₱50 with 1GB, the challenge there is for minimum wage earners to spend ₱50 over three days, that’s already 3‑4% of their income, and you have to balance that off with other expenses like basic necessities, education, and other things you need to pay for,” he said.
Due to these problems, Roxas said, many users choose to either set their phone on airplane mode, tether, or schedule their data consumption, which all prevent them from making the best out of their mobile devices.
“These are the challenges that we’re seeing among Filipinos and I think we see it everyday. There are also implications in terms of what we see on our products because there’s really a lot of potential for us to help. If we look at mobile data usage on android phones, 72% have data for up to 15 days over one month, and there’s is an opportunity there,” he said.
