HÀ NỘI – A digital economy is an inevitable step for development as the traditional economy is being saturated, said Nguyễn Thành Hưng, deputy minister of information and communications at the 2016 Internet Day event in Hà Nội.

The Việt Nam Internet Association yesterday organised the event under the theme “How digital content contributes to an Internet economy?”

The wide application of information technology (IT) in all activities of a digital economy would bring high profits, he said.

“Many countries have defined the digital economy as a new developmental driving force for their socio-economic growth and development, as well as enhancing the national competitive capacity on a global scale,” Hưng said.

In recent years, the digital content industry in Việt Nam has seen remarkable development, playing a more important role in the country’s IT sector.

The revenue of the digital content industry increased from US$480 million to $1.4 billion in the 2008-2014 period with a yearly growth rate of about 20 per cent. The country’s digital content industry attracted more than 4,500 enterprises, creating 70,000 jobs.

Until now, Việt Nam has built a diverse digital content industry, including online products for education, entertainment and content for mobile devices, Hưng said.

The deputy minister said that the digital economy industry would create favourable conditions to boost and develop the digital content industry to become a key sector of the country’s IT industry.

With advantages such as young human resources, competitive labor costs, a sharp increase in smart phones and 3G subscriptions and a developing Internet infrastructure, Việt Nam was evaluated as one of the potential markets of the digital industry, said Hưng.

“This is also an opportunity for Vietnamese companies to join the global supply chain of the digital economy in general and digital content supply chain in particular”, he added.

However, the deputy minister emphasised that the result was not proportional with the country’s potential, digital content revenue remained modest compared to the whole IT sector’s income.

Therefore, Hưng asked telecommunication enterprises to focus on developing infrastructure of transmission and telecommunications, applying modern high-quality technology to provide safe services to people.

Sharing at the event, Lê Hồng Minh, VNG CEO, said for those under 25 years old, Internet means smartphones rather than PCs. “It is similar to the case of changing from black and white television to colour television”, he explained.

“The number of smartphone users will increase 30 times by 2020 compared to 2010 and accounted for nearly 60 per cent of the Vietnamese population. Therefore, the opportunities for mobile Internet will be 40-100 times higher than PC Internet,” Minh said.

To illustrate the development of mobile Internet, Minh gave statistics of the development of mobile games (40 per cent), m-commerce (60 per cent) and mobile payments (80 per cent).

Internet Day is an annual event initiated by the Việt Nam Internet Association. It is an occasion for enterprises operating in the Internet field, association members, domestic and international technology companies, government representatives and state management agencies to meet, exchange and share experiences to develop the Internet, and accelerate application, content and technology services. - VNS