Dr Lai Kok Fung is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of BuzzCity, a developer of global wireless communities and consumer services. BuzzCity's primary offering is myGamma, an international wireless networking community with paid membership. myGamma also provides a unified platform for content owners, service providers and other merchants to sell their online merchandise. Established in 1999 in Singapore, BuzzCity now offers myGamma in 52 countries around the world. Before founding BuzzCity, Kok Fung conducted research in Singapore's Information Technology Institute (now known as Institute of Infocomm Research), specializing in pattern recognition and text retrieval. He graduated with First Class Honours in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore and obtained his Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Synopsis of Dr Lai’s Speech
Mobile phone uptake has exploded in recent years, growing twice as fast in developing countries as in developed countries. Across these countries, mobile phones have changed the way people work, making communications much easier and far less time-consuming. New research among low-income groups in Asia shows that these users are already accessing telecommunications, and form a large untapped market with significant unmet demand.
In this talk, we will share BuzzCity's experience of challenging the conventional wisdom that mobile Internet are adopted only among high-income groups or juvenile tech-junkies. We will share our lessons in "Connecting the Unwired", and how this strategy has created large and profitable markets in developing countries such as South Africa, Thailand, India, and among the blue-collars in developed countries such as US and UK. These lessons should offer fresh perspectives to researchers, developers and policy makers in Singapore's digital media industry who have long laboured in a small market with monopolistic practices. |
