A digital economy, an inevitable step for development as the traditional economy, is being saturated.  The statement was made by Mr Nguyen Thanh Hung, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications, at the 2016 Internet Day event in Ha Noi on 21 December.

Illustrative image (Source: internet)

Organised by the Viet Nam Internet Association, the event had 'How digital content contributes to an Internet economy?' as its theme.

Deputy Minister Hung said "The wide application of information technology (IT) in all activities of a digital economy will bring about high profits. Many countries have defined the digital economy as a new developmental driving force for promoting their socio-economic growth and development, as well as for enhancing the national competitive capacity on a global scale.".

In recent years, Viet Nam's digital content industry has seen remarkable development, which plays a more important role in the country’s IT sector.

The industry’s revenue increased from 480 million USD to 1.4 billion USD in the 2008 - 2014 period with a yearly growth rate of about 20%. It attracted more than 4,500 enterprises, and they together created 70,000 jobs.

Until now, Viet Nam has built a diverse digital content industry, including online products for education, entertainment and content for mobile devices.

The Deputy Minister said that the digital economy industry will create favourable conditions to boost the digital content into a key sector of the country’s IT industry.

Taking advantages of young human resources, competitive labour costs, a sharp increase in smart phones and 3G subscriptions and a developing Internet infrastructure, Viet Nam is evaluated as one of the potential markets of the digital industry, said Hung.

“This is also an opportunity for Vietnamese companies to join the global supply chain of the digital economy in general and digital content supply chain in particular”, he added.

However, he emphasised that the result is not proportional with the country’s potential, and digital content revenue remains modest compared to the whole IT sector’s income.

Therefore, Hung asked telecommunication enterprises to focus on developing infrastructure of transmission and telecommunications, applying modern high-quality technology to provide safe services to people.

Speaking at the event, Le Hong Minh, VNG CEO, said for those under 25 years old, Internet means smartphones rather than PCs. “It is similar to the case of changing from black and white television to colour television”, he explained.

“The number of smartphone users will increase 30 times by 2020 compared to 2010 and accounted for nearly 60% of the Vietnamese population. Therefore, the opportunities for mobile Internet will be 40-100 times higher than PC Internet,” Minh said.

To illustrate the development of mobile Internet, Minh gave statistics of the development of mobile games (40%), m-commerce (60%) and mobile payments (80%).

Internet Day is an annual event initiated by the Viet Nam Internet Association. It is an occasion for enterprises operating in the Internet field, association members, domestic and international technology companies, government representatives and state management agencies to meet, exchange and share experience to develop the Internet, as well as accelerate application, content and technology services.

(Source: VNA/ DA NANG Today)