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The Sun
3 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Mobile penetration tops 100% in most markets
KUALA LUMPUR: Mobile penetration now exceeds 100% in nearly every market, with Hong Kong SAR at 264%, Singapore at 150%, Taiwan region at 145%, Japan and South Korea each at 140%, Malaysia at 130%, and Mainland China at 110%. Even in emerging markets like Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and India, penetration sits at or above 110%. This hyper-connectivity is driving a new kind of customer behaviour: consumers move fluidly between super-apps like LINE, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Zalo, Viber and WhatsApp – sometimes switching platforms mid-conversation, and expect brands to follow them across channels with instant, context-aware, and culturally relevant responses. This was revealed by Infobip, the global cloud communications platform, in its latest report – The AI Advantage: How Leading Brands Thrive in a 24x7 Customer World – that provides fresh insights into how Asia-Pacific's hyper-digital consumers are reshaping expectations for always-on engagement, and how artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming the only way for brands to keep up. The IDC-backed research underpinning the Infobip report reveals that 43% of Asia-Pacific businesses cite improving customer experience as their single biggest operational challenge, hampered by siloed data, disconnected channel strategies, and the cost of delivering round-the-clock support across dozens of markets, languages, and regulatory environments. To address these challenges, the report highlights the growing role of AI technologies including generative AI, agentic AI, and conversational AI, in helping brands simplify operations and deliver connected, real-time experiences across every customer touchpoint. 'The conversation around AI for customer engagement across Asia-Pacific has fundamentally shifted from 'if' to 'how' — 'how deeply and how quickly'. The 'always-on' customer now has a baseline expectation of instant gratification, which traditional business models cannot simply scale to meet. Hence, the new competitive frontier is not just about having AI but about orchestrating advanced capabilities such as generative AI and agentic AI, to craft proactive customer journeys that build lasting customer relationships,' stated IDC Asia-Pacific senior research director Nikhil Batra. Infobip VP revenue Velid Begovic said, 'Asia-Pacific isn't just mobile-first. It's mobile-saturated. People here live their lives across five or six different messaging apps, and they don't think twice about jumping between them. They expect brands to jump with them, and that creates a zero-wait mindset where they don't want to be queued, redirected, or asked to repeat themselves. Unfortunately, the reality is that businesses can't meet that standard with outdated systems. Even early AI efforts like basic chatbots with no access to customer history miss the mark in delivering the hyper-personalised service today's customers expect. AI has gone from an experiment to the engine room of customer experience.' IDC predicts that by 2028, consumers across the region are expected to spend US$32 billion via AI agents that run independently on their smartphones to programmatically shop for goods, services and consider purchases. Businesses are racing to respond, with companies projected to invest over US$30 billion (RM127 billion) in AI infrastructure and platforms by 2027 to deliver the kind of personalised, always-on service customers now take for granted. According to IDC, enterprise AI investment in customer service and marketing across Asia-Pacific is growing at a compound annual rate of 35% through 2029, reflecting the scale and urgency of transformation. By 2028, 40% of mid-tier B2C brands in the region will be using autonomous AI agents to offer 'white glove' levels of service once reserved for luxury customers. 'What we're seeing now is a step change. AI is more than just an FAQ-answering tool. It's an agentic AI coordinating a product exchange across messaging channels without a single manual handoff. It's a generative AI composing a message that feels like it was written for one person, in their language, with their cultural nuance. Our job at Infobip is to take those possibilities and make them real for brands, giving them the infrastructure and local expertise to turn 24/7 engagement from a buzzword into a business advantage,' said Begovic. Infobip is at the centre of this transformation, powering businesses with its Conversational Experience Orchestration Platform (CXOP) – a solution that places agentic AI at the heart of every customer interaction. CXOP unifies messaging, automation, and AI-powered assistance within a single, intelligent platform that adapts to behaviour, sentiment, and intent in real time. This solution sets a new standard, one where brands and users engage in intelligent, meaningful, and outcome-driven conversations.
Malaysian Reserve
3 days ago
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Infobip Positions AI as the New Standard for Customer Experience in Asia-Pacific
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Infobip, the global cloud communications platform, today launched its latest report – The AI Advantage: How Leading Brands Thrive in a 24 x 7 Customer World – providing fresh insights into how Asia-Pacific's hyper-digital consumers are reshaping expectations for always-on engagement, and how artificial intelligence is fast becoming the only way for brands to keep up. Across Asia-Pacific, mobile connectivity has moved beyond saturation. Mobile penetration now exceeds 100% in nearly every market, with Hong Kong SAR at 264%, Singapore at 150%, Taiwan region at 145%, Japan and South Korea each at 140%, Malaysia at 130%, and Mainland China at 110%. Even in emerging markets like Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and India, penetration sits at or above 110%. This hyper-connectivity is driving a new kind of customer behavior: consumers move fluidly between super-apps like LINE, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Zalo, Viber and WhatsApp, sometimes switching platforms mid-conversation, and expect brands to follow them across channels with instant, context-aware, and culturally relevant responses. But while customers never switch off, many businesses are still struggling to meet them where they are. The IDC-backed research underpinning the Infobip report reveals that 43% of Asia-Pacific businesses cite improving customer experience as their single biggest operational challenge, hampered by siloed data, disconnected channel strategies, and the cost of delivering round-the-clock support across dozens of markets, languages, and regulatory environments. To address these challenges, the report highlights the growing role of AI technologies, including generative AI, agentic AI, and conversational AI, in helping brands simplify operations and deliver connected, real-time experiences across every customer touchpoint. 'The conversation around AI for customer engagement across Asia-Pacific has fundamentally shifted from 'if' to 'how' — 'how deeply and how quickly'. The 'always-on' customer now has a baseline expectation of instant gratification, which traditional business models cannot simply scale to meet. Hence, the new competitive frontier is not just about having AI but about orchestrating advanced capabilities such as generative AI and agentic AI, to craft proactive customer journeys that build lasting customer relationships,' stated Nikhil Batra, Senior Research Director, IDC Asia-Pacific. Velid Begovic, VP Revenue, APAC at Infobip, said, 'Asia-Pacific isn't just mobile-first. It's mobile-saturated. People here live their lives across five or six different messaging apps, and they don't think twice about jumping between them. They expect brands to jump with them, and that creates a zero-wait mindset where they don't want to be queued, redirected, or asked to repeat themselves. Unfortunately, the reality is that businesses can't meet that standard with outdated systems. Even early AI efforts like basic chatbots with no access to customer history miss the mark in delivering the hyper-personalized service today's customers expect. AI has gone from an experiment to the engine room of customer experience.' IDC predicts that by 2028, consumers across the region are expected to spend US$32 billion via AI agents that run independently on their smartphones to programmatically shop for goods, services and consider purchases. Businesses are racing to respond, with companies projected to invest over US$30 billion in AI infrastructure and platforms by 2027 to deliver the kind of personalized, always-on service customers now take for granted. According to IDC, enterprise AI investment in customer service and marketing across Asia-Pacific is growing at a compound annual rate of 35% through 2029, reflecting the scale and urgency of transformation. By 2028, 40% of mid-tier B2C brands in the region will be using autonomous AI agents to offer 'white glove' levels of service once reserved for luxury customers. 'What we're seeing now is a step change. AI is more than just an FAQ-answering tool. It's an agentic AI coordinating a product exchange across messaging channels without a single manual handoff. It's a generative AI composing a message that feels like it was written for one person, in their language, with their cultural nuance. Our job at Infobip is to take those possibilities and make them real for brands, giving them the infrastructure and local expertise to turn 24/7 engagement from a buzzword into a business advantage,' Begovic added. Infobip is at the center of this transformation, powering businesses with its Conversational Experience Orchestration Platform (CXOP) – a solution that places agentic AI at the heart of every customer interaction. CXOP unifies messaging, automation, and AI-powered assistance within a single, intelligent platform that adapts to behavior, sentiment, and intent in real time. This solution sets a new standard, one where brands and users engage in intelligent, meaningful, and outcome-driven conversations. The AI Advantage: How Leading Brands Thrive in a 24 x 7 Customer World report is available at offering APAC businesses a practical roadmap for turning AI from a buzzword into a true competitive advantage. 1 Source: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) 2025 Vendor Assessment (doc #US52039625, February 2025). About Infobip Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip's omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and 'things' in 6 continents connected to over 9,700+ connections of which 800+ are direct operator connections. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić and Izabel Jelenić. Recent award wins include: Infobip named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) for the third consecutive year. In 2025, positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision (July 2025) Infobip named among Top 75 in Fortune's Europe's Most Innovative Companies 2025, placing it in the top 25% of all listed organizations (June 2025) Infobip ranked as a Leader in the Omdia CPaaS Universe Report for the third time (April 2025) Infobip ranked an Established Leader in the Juniper Research Conversational AI Leaderboard (Feb 2025) Infobip named a CPaaS Leader for the third time in the IDC MarketScape (Feb 2025) Infobip named one of the top CPaaS providers in Metrigy's CPaaS MetriRank Report (Dec 2024) Infobip named number one among Established Leaders in RCS Business Messaging in Juniper Research's RCS Business Messaging Competitor Leaderboard 2024 (Nov 2024) Infobip recognized as the number one provider in the AIT Fraud Prevention market by Juniper Research (Oct 2024) Infobip named to Fast Company's Annual List of the World's Most Innovative Companies (March 2024)
Time of India
19-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Cellular connections to outpace LPWAN, radio in Indian utilities: Airtel Business-IDC study
NEW DELHI: Cellular connectivity, led by Narrowband-Internet of Things ( NB-IoT ), are likely to outpace the growth of low-powered wireless access network (LPWAN) and other radio technologies in India's utilities sector over the next four years, according to the findings of a study conducted by the International Data Corporation (IDC), commissioned by Bharti Airtel 's enterprise arm. The growth of NB-IoT will be supported by a low-cost of ownership, standardised wireless chipsets and modules, security, and reliability and availability, the study found. The Airtel Business-IDC study found that the growth rate of cellular connections, including NB-IoT, in the utilities segment is expected to increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.6% between 2023 and 2027. By contrast, the LPWAN, including LoRaWAN and Sigfox, and radio (including RF mesh) segments are expected to grow at annualised rates of 17.8% and 13.5%, respectively, over the same period. In India, NB-IoT is being extensively utilised under the National Smart Grid Mission (NSGM), which envisages the conversion of 222.4 million meters into prepaid smart meters. However, just 32.90 million smart meters, or about 14.8%, have been deployed across India, according to the latest data available on the NSGM dashboard. 'Telecom service providers in India are further investing in upgrading the underlying network infrastructure, including 4G and NB-IoT networks. This improved connectivity will encourage the adoption of cloud platforms and services, offering greater scalability and flexibility for utilities companies,' IDC analysts Nikhil Batra and Swathi Arunaa said in the report. NB-IoT provides cellular-based connectivity with wide coverage and low power consumption, making it ideal for large-scale smart metering deployments, the analysts said. 'By investing in reliable connectivity solutions, utilities can ensure the seamless integration of AMI and smart metering into their operations, thereby driving the success of India's National Smart Grid Mission,' according to the analysts. The country's top telecom carriers, Reliance Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi), are all bullish on the growth prospects of IoT which has become central to their enterprise segment strategy. Gopal Vittal, vice chairman & managing director of Airtel, at the telco's most recent post-earnings conference call said, 'We continue to add muscle to our digital portfolio with cloud…cybersecurity, financial services, IoT and CPaaS and all of these are getting additional investments.' For instance, Secure Meters in partnership with Airtel Business has successfully deployed 1.7 million NB-IoT smart meters across Bihar. Secure has developed its own smart meters with NB IoT communication module, head end system, and meter data management system, which have been integrated with Airtel's IoT platform to ensure seamless cellular connectivity. This large-scale deployment is supported by Airtel's (NB-IoT/GPRS) network, and includes a network feasibility tool and a SIM services management portal to assist Secure in effectively planning and implementing smart meter installations.
