Among the reasons that he feels differently about the nation’s technological progress is because of the high smartphone and broadband penetration rate.
“Malaysians’ adoption and smartness when it comes to using (mobile) applications is fully comparable with Europe,” he says.
“People on our network use about 1GB per month. Some devices use more. Android more than iOS devices, I’ve noticed. We have people on Android using about 1.3GB or so per month. Both on prepaid and postpaid, people are using a lot of data in Malaysia.”
However, he points out that the local e-commerce market has yet to fully develop.
“Companies here are still fairly traditional in the way they operate. People have much more (technologically) advanced experiences personally,” Lundal says.
“This is going to change in the next five years, but it hasn’t come about yet… The corporate sector is lagging behind more mature markets in Europe.”