Vietnam among YouTube’s top five global markets
Vietnam is among the five biggest global markets for YouTube, a representative of the video-sharing website said Wednesday.
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Vietnam is among the five biggest global markets for YouTube. Photo by Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
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This result is based on how long users spend watching videos on the site.
All of the markets have year-on-year growth levels that are very high double digits, or, in some cases, triple digits annual growth, Vidyasagar said.
"Mobile consumption, actually, really started showing up as a game-changer from this region," he said.
Vietnamese spend around seven hours a day online, of which 2.5 hours on average are spent on social media. YouTube is the second-most accessed site in the country with a user ratio of 59 percent, behind Facebook at 61 percent, according to a 2018 report by We Are Social.
73 percent of the population uses mobile phones, on which 42 percent use smartphones and 50 million people use mobile social media, according to a report by Vietnamese digital advertising firm Adsota earlier this year.
Additionally, the Vietnamese government is pushing the nation to adopt new mobile connectivity technologies, specifically the 5G network, which should have nationwide coverage by 2020, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung has said.
Major mobile carriers in Vietnam have already announced plans to develop 5G networks using equipment from other suppliers, including Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung Electronics.
Earlier this year, Viettel, Vietnam’s largest telecommunications company, became the first one to receive a license to trial its 5G services.
Despite new developments in high-speed mobile Internet connectivity technology that could potentially make video content more accessible to users, Vietnam is also looking to tighten conditions for tech businesses operating in the country, including Google, which acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006.
Under the country’s Cybersecurity Law, which took effect this year, local and foreign tech firms would need to open representative offices in Vietnam and store users’ data locally.
Companies are also required by law to submit users’ data to the Ministry of Public Security upon receipt of requests in writing, in cases where any infringement of the Cybersecurity Law is being investigated.
Both YouTube and Google have invested in technologies and implemented tools and policies to meet regulatory standards, Vidyasagar said.
"We need a mix of both machine and human interference to come together here."
