I am writing this in my room at Lanson Place overlooking what may not be a very attractive view but yet what is to me quintessentially Hong Kong. Foggy morning, tall narrow buildings packed next to each other like sardines, the constant hum of a city that never sleeps.
This is the weekend in particular when the city will not sleep – the Rugby Sevens – and last night walking around in Wanchai and Causeway Bay, well, you can tell the beer will not stop flowing either.
I just flew in from Dubai on the red eye on Emirates. I was fortunate to get an upgrade to first class and so my eyes weren’t that red when I landed. Note to ME: First is great, but don’t get used to it.
I am struck by the contrast between Dubai and Hong Kong – how everything is so much smaller in Hong Kong and everything is just big, bigger and biggest in the former. I think this applies not only to the physical but also in ambitions and dreams – but then Dubai has always had ambitions and dreams bigger than anyone else.
A day before we opened our WIT Middle East, the UAE launched what it claims is the world’s first store for smart government applications through Android and iOS platforms. The store features over 100 smart applications developed by local and federal agencies and has been launched in partnership and coordination with Google and Apple.
This is all part of the “Smart City” initiative launched in March – you’ve heard of “mobile first” strategies for businesses, well this is a “all about mobile” government project which will transform the emirate. The ambition is that 1,000 government services will go smart in the next three years.
When he launched the initiative, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, said, “Our country is today ushering into a new era for the improvement and development of quality of life through this gigantic project which got underway through an unprecedented public-private partnership to make a new reality for all and change the concept of city which the human being lives in so as to live with him through his smart phone and who will be its key pivot.”
Our first WIT Middle East, which concluded on Thursday, was themed “All about ME” – ME for the region and ME for the new customer, increasingly expressive, demanding and tech-savvy.
Well, it might also have been “All About Mobile”, for if there was one clear message that came out of the conference, it is how you’ve got to get mobile right if you wish to play in this region or don’t bother.
You’ve got a population in the region, 60% of whom are under 30. “This is a population that can change its habits overnight,” said Abdul Wahab Teffaha, secretary general of the Arab Air Carriers Organisation when he spoke about his industry and how hard it was for airlines to change.
And it’s mobile devices that will drive that change.
Saudi Arabia has the highest smartphone penetration in the world. Every third search query on Google in MENA is on a mobile or tablet and that number has doubled within a year, according to Google’s Ivan Jakovljevic.
The region also watches a lot of videos – there are 6,000,000,000 hours of video watched globally on YouTube every month, of these, 300,000,000 are daily views across the Arab world.
In Saudi Arabia, the market every online travel player is going after, one out of two search queries are non-desktop and 81% of leisure travellers have watched an online video to help them decide on a destination.
Bookings on mobile are still lagging – while 48% of KSA leisure travellers searched for air travel on a smartphone, only 12% reserved or booked on the device – but Cleartrip has clearly proven that can be cracked if you build it right.
In the 18 months since launch, mobile now accounts for 32% of searches and 19% of bookings on Cleartrip, as Subramanya Sharma, CMO, shared in his presentation on “10 Lessons Building Cleartrip Mobile”.
According to PayPal, m-commerce is expected to represent 20% of the projected $15 billion e-commerce market by 2015, with travel the top category in online spend. While cash on delivery now accounts for 80% of payment methods currently, it will go down to 60% by 2015 – but from the conversations taking place on the stage, these numbers could be conservative.
Take The Emirates Group, whose fate and fortunes are tied with Dubai, as an example. It created an Innovation Lab a couple of years ago to match new business challenges with IT solutions.
“The innovation board has 12 senior department heads from a mix of operationals, customer facing and other departments across the group. It keeps a watch on the latest technology trends, both hardware and software, to help keep Emirates Group on the leading edge of the technology,” said Sanjay Sharma, Manager, IT Innovation.
He speaks of the day when five billion people will use mobile phones by 2017 and so it is clear where innovation has to go. Solutions are being created, designed for both its workforce, always on the move, and customers, ditto.
I learnt that it takes two minutes for McDonald’s to prepare a meal and when an order is placed on a smartphone, McDonald’s can sense when the customer is two minutes away and it starts preparing the order.
“If McDonald’s can do it, so can an airline,” said Sameer Poonja, head of digital technologies at Emirates Airlines.
The airline is running Hackathons and one idea is to also create a “House of Apps” similar to that launched by the government where customers can pick and choose the app they want. It is experimenting with Raspberry Pi computers.
After the event, I walked along The Beach outside the hotel and stopped to admire some sandcastles (below) – not just any sandcastles mind you. These are big, bigger, biggest sandcastles I’ve ever seen and couldn’t help but think that while in the past, Dubai built its future with sand, now it’s betting its future on the smartphone and the cloud.
Here in Hong Kong, I can hardly see the cloud from the fog – but then again, this weekend, it’s all about the ball on the ground. And you can’t beat the energy of Hong Kong on a weekend like this or any other day.
