MobileMonday Bangkok with Google, Amazon Web Services and Pocket PlayLab

By | 1 June, 2012

MobileMonday (MoMo) is an open networking event of mobile industry individuals to share ideas and discuss trends. MoMo originated in Finland and is present in many cities across Asia including Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Mumbai, Manila, Hanoi and many more cities globally.

Mobile Monday Bankgkok. (Photo credit: momobkk.com)

MoMo Bangkok just held an event this May 28 for mobile industry followers. This meeting had a complete set of knowledge and insights from start-ups, overview of business to technical details.The event was held free of charge at the newest 6 star hotel in Bangkok: the Okura Prestige Hotel.

Google Thailand Head of Marketing, Pornthip Kongchun, provided us useful statistics and insights into the Thai mobile usage.

On videos:

  • 33% of TH users watch videos on thier smartphones;
  • 67% of TH viewers access video via the mobile web, 37% through apps;
  • 15% of TH users share videos via their smartphones.

The stats that captured all the mobile enthusiasts in the room was the one that showed Thai mobile phone users partake in other activities:

  •  37% Purchase products
  • 26% use GPS
  • 53% Download applications
  • 60% Search online
  • 44% Access the internet
  • 82% Text message

Pornthip also revealed that a new Google Indoor Map will be launched in Bangkok soon. The indoor map service provides directions inside buildings, malls and/or airports.  The speaker even said that attendees can email her suggestions for buildings or malls in Thailand to cover. For instance, I would want Chatuchak market (JJ market) to be included, even though it’s not exactly an indoor mall. I, for one, could never find the same shop I went to the last time, and it seems to be a maze in there.

The second speaker was Kingsley Wood, Business Development of APAC from Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is one of the largest cloud providers, and a great application services tool for startups to big organizations. AWS allows you to pay as go, just like your regular utility. The objective of Kingsley’s speech was to make sure that everyone who leaves the room understands cloud services and AWS products.

AWS customers range from small web hosting providers to big-name mobile gaming provider and social networks, like Farmville (Zynga), Pinterest, Dropbox and Instagram. One of their successful customers in Thailand is the mobile app “Molome” on Blackberry.

Although AWS is a service you can use from anywhere in the world, the main obstacle in Thailand would be the language barrier. Thai developers and technical specialists find it difficult to communicate with AWS in English even by email. Some developers wish to see Amazon open an office in Thailand just the way Google opened up here.

The last speaker was a co-founder of facebook app Pagemodo, which had over 60,000 small business users as of February last year according to TechCrunch, and who sold the Pagemodo to Webs Inc.  Jakob Lykkegaard Pedersen has started a new company from Thailand called Pocket Playlab and is currently on a hiring spree for Thai app developers (iOS) to join his team. He unofficially revealed Classroom and Papermonster mobile games and showed us a glimpse of their colorful characters. There is no local server infrastructure and no local payment and banking system for mobile apps in Thailand, and so Pocket Playlab’s targets are the international market. However, Pedersen and his partner have chosen to develop the games with the Thai developers.



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