Smartphone use across Southeast Asia is dominated by a small handful of messaging applications developed by transnational corporations. These messaging apps (LINE, Viber, BBM, WhatsApp, Zalo) not only facilitate synchronous communication between family and friends but are increasingly evolving into multi-media content providers and digital marketplaces: a single point of access for the internet in general. For the region’s new smartphone adopters mobile messaging applications powerfully shape their experience of the internet. A striking feature in the uptake of messaging applications competing for users across the region is the extent to which service popularity respects national boundaries. Different national territories show marked contrasts in their use of these widely available mobile messaging apps.

 

The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to understand how transnational media corporations embed their products in national markets. What aspects of this embedding process can explain marked national differences in the user base and popularity of a transnational provider? What can we learn from the variegated patchwork of brands dominant in Southeast Asia about contemporary processes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialization in global digital capitalism? Secondly, it asks what consequences these embedding processes have for the operations of mobile messaging apps within national territories. What interactions and parameters define the operational relationship between transnational media corporations and nation states in the region?