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The Vietnamese digital economy will grow by 31% this year compared to the same period last year, reaching $21 billion.

This is stated in the e-Conomy SEA 2021 Report, which was released this week by Temasek, Google, and management consulting firm Bain & Company.

As a result, the Vietnamese internet economy could reach US$220 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) by 2030, placing it second only to Indonesia.

This is encouraging in light of the shrinking online travel market. If current trends continue, Vietnam’s GMV is expected to reach $57 billion by 2025.

The Vietnamese digital economy

The report also stated that since COVID-19 was reintroduced in the first half of this year, the country has added 8 million digital consumers, with non-metro areas accounting for more than half of the total.

Notably, 99 percent of these new consumers expressed a desire to continue using online services after the pandemic, indicating a very high level of user adoption of digital services and products in our country.

Thirty percent of digital merchants believe that without digital platforms, they would not have survived the pandemic.

Digital financial services are also becoming critical enablers, with 98% of digital merchants now accepting digital payments and 72% using digital lending solutions. Many are also embracing digital tools to engage with their customers, with 72% planning to increase their use of digital marketing tools over the next five years.

Vietnam as an innovation hub

According to the report, Vietnam remains an appealing innovation hub as global capital continues to pour in.

Investments and deals reached a record high of $1.37 billion in the first half of 2021, surpassing full-year investments in recent years, fueled by investment interest in digital start-ups in the fields of e-commerce, fintech, healthtech, and edtech.

In terms of Southeast Asia, the report states that the region is on track to become a digital economy with a GMV of US$1 trillion by 2030.

More than 440 million internet users, including 350 million digital consumers in the region, are the primary drivers of this.

Southeast Asia has added 60 million new digital consumers since the outbreak began, with 20 million joining in the first half of this year.

Southeast Asian digital consumers have increased their spending on online services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, Southeast Asia’s GMV is expected to reach $174 billion by the end of the year, rising to $360 billion by 2025, exceeding the previous estimate of $300 billion.

The year 2021 marked the tipping point for many technological advances that would shape our understanding and interaction with the world to come.

Let’s take a look back at some of the year’s most significant technological developments.

The Beginning of the Metaverse

The announcement of Metaverse on November 24th was a significant event in the ever-changing world of technology. This was followed by Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement in October that Facebook would change its name to ‘Meta’ as part of the company’s transition from a social media platform to a virtual reality platform.

Metaverse is a concept of a centralized virtual world in which people and businesses interact with one another via VR headsets, and this platform lacks the usual physical boundaries that today’s social media platforms have.

The Metaverse has the potential to shape how people interact with one another in the ever-expanding virtual world.

The Crypto-Boom and the Global Chip Scarcity

The year 2021 was the year of cryptocurrency, with the industry growing from USD 24 billion to USD 63 billion in a single year, and the trend is expected to continue.

However, this boom, combined with the massive surge in demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, resulted in the worst supply-chain issue in the computer industry’s history, affecting global computer buyers as well as every tech industry from chip manufacturers to car companies.

NFT stands for Non-fungible Token.

NFT is an Ethereum Blockchain function that allows a person to trade ownership of anything digital, such as images, drawings, music, and so on, with another person, but each NFT is unique, unlike currencies, which are fungible or identical.

NFTs have become a massive trend in digital art trading in a very short period of time, though the NFT market is still primarily a place where rich people, mostly for bragging rights, throw away their money to own something rather than NFTs being anything substantial.

Silicone made to order

The world’s largest technology companies have finally taken the step of designing their own custom SOCs for their own products.

Apple was the most successful in this venture; the second iteration of their custom silicon, known as the ‘M1 Pro’ and ‘M1 Max,’ set the standard for consumer-level computer efficiency and computational prowess, leaving other manufacturers in the dust.

Google, on the other hand, created their own mobile chip called ‘Tensor,’ which was used in their flagship mobile line-up and delivered impressive performance.

All of the other major phone manufacturers may enter the custom silicon game by 2022; Tesla has hinted at something similar in their upcoming phone release.

LG’s exit from the smartphone market

LG, a well-known electronics company, announced their retirement from the phone business in 2021, stating that they would focus more on home appliances and other electronic products.

To say the least, the company’s recent performance in the smartphone industry has been poor, with bad branding, questionable hardware and software choices, and a lack of reliability causing the company to fall significantly behind their competitors.

However, LG will always have a special place in the industry because of their constant pursuit of innovation, and they were the first to set trends for many of the smartphone features that are now ‘mainstream’ across the smartphone industry.

Let’s take a look at some of the first features introduced by LG to the market: capacitive touchscreen, dual-core processor, 1080p video recording, dual-rear camera, quad-core processor, double-tap to wake, mass-produced quad HD screen, dual-screen display, ultrawide camera, 18*9 display, triple rear camera, and so on. LG will be sorely missed.