Japanese Own Outlandish Share Of South East Asian Market

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

While everybody has their eyes on China and possibly India, the car market in smaller South East Asian countries is exploding right below the RADAR screen. By themselves, car sales in a country like Vietnam don’t seem to amount to much. Now, go to the trouble and add a few South East Asian countries together. The Nikkei [sub] did and notes to its amazement that the car market in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore jumped 21 percent in the first half year to 1.6 million units.

Now why would The Nikkei be so excited about this?

1.23 million or 77 percent of these rapidly growing sales in the balmy countries are by Japanese automakers. Taken together, the car market for the region is similar to “such emerging markets as Brazil, India and Russia,” as The Nikkei can’t help to note.

In Thailand, sales rose 40 percent in the first half to 606,523 units. Sales in Indonesia rose 28 percent to 535,263 units.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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4 of 12 comments
  • Mor2bz Mor2bz on Aug 08, 2012

    This is great, a woman standing by a car without the stupid, degrading, unhealthy, expected high heeled shoes.

  • Icemilkcoffee Icemilkcoffee on Aug 08, 2012

    This is bad news for the scooter makers. This territory was the last stronghold of the smokey 2 stroke scooters.

  • Bd2 Bd2 on Aug 08, 2012

    Interesting that while the Japanese brands dominate the SE Asian markets, the Koreans lead the Japanese in the Russian and Indian markets while they butt heads in the Chinese market.

  • Athos Nobile Athos Nobile on Aug 08, 2012

    "1.23 million or 77 percent of these rapidly growing sales in the balmy countries are by Japanese automakers." What are the European and American automakers numbers? Ghosn is definitely always into something.

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