Bangkok Post ลงข่าว ReadyPlanet วันที่ 28/02/2008 00:00:00 AM ,ผู้เข้าชม : 3036
เมื่อวันพุธที่ 27 กุมภาพันธ์ 2551 หนังสือพิมพ์ Bangkok Post ได้ลงข่าว ReadyPlanet เนื้อข่าวมี ดังนี้
Thai company enters Chinese web market
Readyplanet provides tools and hosting
SASIWIMON BOONRUANG
Readyplanet, a local web development company, has entered the Chinese market to tap opportunities in the booming e-commerce market there, and its managing director suggests that other Thai entrepreneurs should do business there.
With seven years experience in the Internet business, Readyplanet is the largest provider of web site creation tools in Thailand. Late last year, the company entered the Chinese market, providing development tools and a web hosting service. According to Grand Planet Enterprise MD Songyot Kanthamanon, Asia had the largest market for web development tools and he recommended that Thai entrepreneurs view China as a potential market.
The size of e-commerce business depends largely on the population. In the US, there are over 300 million Internet users, while China now has 160 million, he said.
"There is a big opportunity in China as the market is growing very rapidly," Songyot said, noting that of the total of 160 million Internet subscribers there, over 50 million were broadband users.
"There are millions of SMEs in China and this is Readyplanet's customer target group," he said, noting that the company had Chinese and Chinese-speaking staff, both here in Thailand and in China, because language was another key factor in order to do business there.
Readyplanet is now in the process of registering a company in China and Songyot said that, in the meantime, the company had outsourced its marketing there to a Chinese company.
As an emerging market, the payment system in China was not so advanced and initially the company has depended on debit cards and bank transfer services. Readyplanet now has some 30 new customers a month.
The company will increase its developer team this year to be able to cater to the growing number of customers and in the future Songyot said that Readyplanet would provide online sales, using data generated by a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
He pointed out that in Singapore over 50 per cent of the population used e-commerce, but Singapore did not target just the domestic market, they had expanded to other countries, especially China.
Unfortunately, Thailand is behind Vietnam, since the Internet penetration rate here is 13 per cent, compared to 21 per cent in Vietnam. The reason was that the Vietnamese government had strongly expanded the country's infrastructure, he explained.
Readyplanet last year had grown compared to the overall market, with an increase of 40 per cent over the previous year, Songyot said.
Readyplanet.com provides Internet training and website templates for companies to manage e-commerce sites. The managing director said the growth in e-commerce was a result of a more people using the Internet and that in an economic downturn they had tried to look for more channels and had become more serious in doing business on the Web.
"E-commerce is an effective alternative for those looking for a business opportunity," he said.
The principles behind developing an e-commerce web site were accessibility, attractiveness, simplicity, speed and credibility, Songyot said.
E-commerce here had continued to boom here last year, with the total value being over 300 billion baht, despite the economic slowdown, he said.
However, the number of e-commerce sites here was limited due to the low Internet penetration rate, but Songyot recommended that SMEs consider the Internet as another effective business channel.Thai company enters Chinese web market
28 Feb 2008
Siraporn Aiemlert
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