Countries mentioned: China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand. Key companies: AirAsia, Gojek, Grab, WeChat. Essential stats: This year, retail sales will reach $970.83 billion across the six major economies we track in Southeast Asia. But only 4.6% of those sales—or $45.07 billion—will transact via ecommerce.

For example, Chinese retail giant JD.com launched its first “unmanned convenience store” in 2017, and has since rolled out line-free technology in its stores in China and Indonesia.

The pandemic-driven two-year ecommerce boom of 2020 is set to decelerate considerably this year. Brick-and-mortar retail, meanwhile, returned with a vengeance last year and is in better shape than expected going into 2022.

Facebook and Google announced they were funding two trans-Pacific cables connecting the US West Coast to Singapore and Indonesia. Amazon and Meta contractor Edge Cable Holdings USA applied to operate a submarine cable linking the Philippines to California, after China Mobile (CMI) bowed out of the project.

Since Alibaba held its first Singles’ Day in 2009, the event has grown into a shopping extravaganza that lasts for weeks and stretches across various platforms.

Indonesia will have 121.9 million users this year, 4.5% more than last year, amounting to nearly 40% of the six-country regional total. Indonesia will also boast the second-fastest ecommerce expansion in Southeast Asia in 2022, at 23.0%, providing marketers with a nice double-incentive.

Singles’ Day, the online shopping festival invented by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and held on November 11, is widely known in the West. Now, a series of similar “double-digit” shopping festivals from digital powerhouses Lazada and Shopee are driving ecommerce growth in Southeast Asia.

Only four countries in the world will produce faster growth rates than Southeast Asia’s combined figure, and two of them—the Philippines and Indonesia—are in the region. Five countries within the region—the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand—will rank among the top 10 markets measured by retail ecommerce sales growth.

China’s wallets have gone mobile

Like many regions around the world, Southeast Asia experienced an ecommerce boom in 2020, as various pandemic-driven social lockdowns encouraged more shopping from home. According to our estimates, ecommerce grew by 35.2% collectively in the region last year, and our newest forecast projects 14.3% growth this year. However, traditional retail is still overwhelmingly dominant.