Isriya Paireepairit, Analyst at the Siam Intelligence Unit gives his commentary on 2009 tech industry to Bangkok Post, 30 Dec 2009 issue.

Thai tech scene's winners and losers

Isriya Paireepairit, Analyst at the Siam Intelligence Unit, reflects on a year of ups and downs in the consumer IT scene:

Thailand - Winners

BlackBerry for sure became one of the Thailand’s winners of 2009.

BlackBerry It is impossible to get on a skytrain and not notice all the girls chatting on their BBs. This phenomenon is largely down to the AIS marketing team that has made BlackBerry hipper here in Bangkok than anywhere else in the rest of the world; the AIS dancing girl using BB is particularly memorable. Number two telco DTac is late, perhaps too late, to join this party.

Social Media Marketing Thanks to Twitter and @PM - Abhisit and his cabinet, @Thaksinlive, @Suthichai and The Nation focus on hyping up social media, everyone is now aware and social media marketing events are popping up all the time. 2009 was the year of the social media gold rush for the marketing and PR industry. The marketers have just realised the power of social media and believe it to be a magic wand that will reverse the decline in the advertising industry. Next year, reality will hit when they will realise it is not all it was hyped up to be.

Facebook and Farmville A social media game on Facebook, Farmville is a hit everywhere from school classrooms to the offices in parliament. This year Facebook has gained a substantial following in Thailand, with a reported 1.7 million users. We saw signs of the first killer app with the funny quiz, but the real killer app is social gaming.

Netbooks I am not a netbook fan (I am on a ultra-portable) but nobody can deny that the Netbook has been the highlight of the hardware market this year. Whether they use it as as their main PC or not, people buy it. More than half the enthusiast population of Bangkok seems to have one, the exception being Apple devotees. That said, the lack of performance means many of them will switch to a new generation of ultra-portables based on Intel's CULV (consumer ultra low voltage) platform next year.

Thailand - Losers

A year ago, Hi5 was the social network of Thailand. Then the girls learned of Facebook's quizzes and games. They switched, and the boys followed.

NTC and the Thai people The delay in 3G licensing is a loss for everyone. The National Telecommunications Commission has failed to live up to their promise as a shining new hope in our telecommunications industry. I cannot remember any significant NTC achievement except the retro 80s-looking advertisement on the MRT.

Sipa The chronicle of failures at Sipa, the ICT Ministry's Software Industry Promotion Agency, is another key loss for the nation. It is especially painful for myself as an ex-Sipa employee. How do we fix Sipa? First we must stop using the board and committee process of choosing new directors, which has failed twice. We need a capable person with the guts to restructure and fire people to save the organisation, similar to how American companies regroup after crises.

Citizen journalism It was the big thing of 2008 but ultimately it failed to live up to the hype. After a year of blogs and citizen journalism, the Thai media scene is still the same, dominated by only few big papers. I cannot see any local parallels of the Huffington Post or Perez Hilton in this country.

Global - Winners

Microsoft After a few lacklustre years, Microsoft now knows how to refresh the company and is catching up with competitors: Windows 7, Bing, Xbox, Zune, IE9, Azure, Office Web. While these products are still lagging, things are getting in shape. The next few years will be fun for us.

Twitter No explanation is needed

Apple While there was no big news from Apple, 2009 was a profitable year. Cupertino proved it can run as a company without Steve Jobs. But Jobs is back, iPhone 3GS is a huge hit, the App Store now has a huge number of apps and their high-end market segment got off lightly from the global financial crisis.

Cisco It's buyout year for them. They will be the new IBM and HP.

Global - Losers

Yahoo! It is not important any more, no matter what it tries. Many individual products and features are good but when they have the Yahoo! brand, no one seems to be interested.

Dell Corporate IT spend collapsed with the financial crisis and Dell quickly went the same way. I do not believe Michael Dell can perform any significant turnaround next year.

Nokia and Symbian - It reminds me Porter's Five Forces principle. Nokia is very good example for a company that cannot respond to a substitute product fast enough. Symbian is old and losing its charm and we need a few more years for full a Maemo product line.