Online Sales in Malaysia Will Hit RM5b in 2014

Malaysia’s online shopping market size is estimated to increase from RM1.8 million in 2010to RM 5 billion next year, according to the finance ministry in its Economic Report 2013/2014 released today, Bernama news agency reports.

 

The report also reveals that Malaysia is the one of the top three countries in Asia on the average amount spent online in the past 12 months, thanks to the growth of online purchasing airline tickets and hotel bookings as well as the mature of epayments in the country. Companies should transform their traditional business to online business in order to be able to compete in future.

 

Other highlights in the report are:

• Internet users is expected to reach 25 million in 2015, increased from 18 million in 2013;
• Household broadband penetration rate had risen to 66.8 per cent as at June-end;
• There are 42.6 million mobile subscribers in the country;
• High penetration rate of social networks (91%) with 11.8 million Malaysians have Facebook accounts and more than 80 per cent of Malaysians access Facebook;
• The adoption of ICT among SMEs was still slow due to limited financial resources, lack of technological knowledge and high cost of technical team and software applications;
• Internet accessibility is low for SMEs due to high costs of band width and domain registration;
• Only 100,000 of 645,136 SMEs having websites and 20 per cent of SMEs using ICT extensively in their daily operations; and
• The spending on online advertising was only one per cent of the budget of Malaysian businesses.