Google says Gemini is being adopted faster in Southeast Asia than any other Google app in the region's history

Google published a report on July 14 detailing Gemini adoption across Southeast Asia, saying the app is being adopted faster there than any Google product the company has previously launched in the region, which is home to roughly 600 million people.

What's new

Google's report states directly: "Southeast Asians are adopting Gemini at a record-breaking pace — faster than they've adopted any other Google app." The company backs the claim with several concrete figures. Active users on the Gemini app in the region have "more than doubled" over the past year. Usage skews young and mobile: nearly 40% of the region's population is under 25, and 75% of Gemini requests in the region come from mobile devices.

Language is a central theme of the report. Nearly 70% of prompts submitted in the region are in native languages rather than English, with particularly high native-language usage in Vietnam (89%), Thailand (87%), and Indonesia (84%). Google also highlights multimodal usage: more than 40% of prompts in the region involve voice, photos, or video, with voice alone accounting for about 10% of prompts.

On generative usage specifically, Google says roughly 40% of queries in the region ask Gemini to generate entirely new output rather than answer a question or edit existing content. The report credits two specific generative features: 5 billion images have been generated using Nano Banana (Google's image generation feature) over the past year, and almost 1 million songs have been created since the company introduced its Lyria 3 music-generation model. The report specifically names Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam as markets covered.

Context

Southeast Asia has become a priority growth market for major AI assistants given its large, young, mobile-first population and high linguistic diversity — a market where native-language support and mobile-first design matter more than in mature, English-dominant markets. The report follows Google's earlier move to open an Africa Applied AI Lab in Accra, part of a pattern of Google publishing region-specific adoption and investment data to underscore Gemini's global reach beyond the U.S. and Europe.

The report also lands amid broader competition for assistant market share in the region from OpenAI's ChatGPT and various regional and Chinese AI apps, which have been aggressively localizing for Southeast Asian languages and mobile-data-constrained usage patterns.

Why it matters

The native-language usage figures are the most significant data point here: a market where 70-89% of prompts arrive in local languages rather than English is a strong signal that Gemini's language coverage and quality in Southeast Asian languages specifically, not just its English-language capability, is driving adoption. That is a different growth story than the assistant-market narrative common in the U.S., where English-language capability is often taken as a given.

The generative-usage numbers — 5 billion images and nearly 1 million songs — also indicate Google is successfully converting a meaningful share of its user base in the region into users of its newer creative-generation features (Nano Banana, Lyria 3), not just its core chat assistant, which matters for monetization and stickiness as competition in the region intensifies.