The New Year is here and, rather than spend time looking
back on 2013 in Southeast Asia, I try to look forward.
Without wishing to repeat last year’s thoughts on Southeast
Asia being the world’s most exciting place for tech (I still believe it and the
argument is largely the same), here’s a look at five high-level trends that we
think will figure highly in the region’s tech scene in 2014.
Social commerce
The past year has seen social commerce scale new heights in
Asia. We’re already familiar with the fact that services like Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp are used to connect consumers with retailers, but 2013
saw things get a lot more legitimate with chat apps themselves introducing
official sales channels.