With the number of internet users projected to reach 66 million by 2016, Google is seeing a major change in the digital landscape in the Philippines.
“Today, we already have 44 million Filipinos online and this year alone, we are going to see 10 million Filipinos coming to the internet for the first times, that is twice the size of the population of Singapore,” Ken Lingan, Google's Country Manager for the Philippines, said during the launch of the Android One platform in the country.
Currently, the Philippines is already the second largest internet market in Southeast Asia, and the sixth largest in Asia. Citing data from the National Statistics Office (NSO) there are about 22 million families in the Philippines today and there are about 12 million overseas Filipino workers, who are part of these families.
Nationwide, there are also about 25 million students that have the ability to access the wealth of the world's information through the web.
“The Philippine economy is growing by about 6-7%. But if we look at the agriculture sector which employs about 30 percent of the country's population, only 11% of the GDP comes from agriculture,” Lingan said.
“So think of the possibility of our farmers being able to access the web tools to find out where to sell their produce, there is immense growth potential. Imagine this happening in every sector of society,” he added.
According to Google, mobile internet use in the Philippines is growing 112% year-on-year. By the end of this year, around 50% of the population will have smartphones and this growth is largely being powered by Android.
Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Product Management, Google, however, said that while the number is encouraging, smartphone users do not really get a very nice experience because of hardware and software issues, as well as the fact that connectivity is expensive and the bandwidth limited.