Thailand leads IoT learning in the ASEAN

32% of Thai enterprises have tried implementing digital transformations in at least one area of their businesses.

Thailand led Internet of Things (IoT) explorations in the ASEAN region as 89% of businesses are actually developing and implementing IoT solutions, a study by Asia IoT Business Platform found. Thailand is followed by Malaysia (86%), Indonesia (83%), Philippines (80%), and Vietnam in adopting IoT solutions (79%).

According to the Enterprise Survey, 26% of Thai enterprises are in the process of developing IoT solutions whilst 32% have already tried implementing digital transformations in at least one area of their businesses.

“There’s been strong interest from local enterprises in Thailand to implement digitisation and IoT projects,” Asia IoT Business Platform CEO Irza Suprapto said. “This demand creates an ecosystem of innovation locally as it encourages investments by technology startups and established solution providers in Thailand.”

The Thai government has launched Thailand 4.0 which aims to develop big cities like Phuket, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen and Bangkok into technology hubs. In 2017, Deputy Prime Minister Prajin Jungton said that the government eyes to launch 100 smart cities in two decades’ time.

Region-wide, the industrial sector (87%) saw the most initiatives of IoT adoption, followed by transportation, distribution, and logistics (83%), banking, finance, and insurance (83%), government and public services (81%), and real estate and hospitality (79%).

The survey also found that Aseans believe that IoT solutions can increase productivity levels (74.8%), better customer services (61.3%), and reduce operational costs (68%). The respondents also believe that high cost (68.9%) is the major hindrance to implementing large scale IoT solutions, followed by security issues (56.3%), incompatibility with legacy systems (48.2%), complexity of systems (43.6%), and manpower issues (40.4%).

Asia IoT Business Platform studied responses from 1,573 individuals from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.