Advanced Television

Singapore online content market to hit $24m

August 8, 2008

Kamlesh Kalwar, an industry analyst with Frost, said that the Singapore online content market, which is dominated by online gaming, was worth $13.4 million last year.

“Online gaming accounts for just under 50 per cent of revenues (in the online content market in Singapore), followed by online videos and online music, in that order,” Kalwar noted. “The market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 44 per cent till 2013 to reach US$120.16 million.”

He noted that the premium video segment is rapidly emerging from the shadow of online music and gaming as a result of the advances in compression technology and high bandwidth broadband availability, which makes streaming video and video downloads feasible. “Video-on-demand (VoD) operators in Singapore suggest that the main restraints for growth of VoD services are issues stemming from high set-up and operational costs,” he observed, adding that once Singapore's Next Generation National Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN) was up and running, the online content services industry would witness substantial growth.

“If the high-speed broadband network is able to deliver high-speed broadband connection to every home in Singapore at affordable rates, there is nothing to stop the growth of the online content industry,” he said, pointing out that with the prevalent strict anti-piracy laws in place, Singapore would have a good environment for both the content production and distribution ecosystem to grow.

“With the proliferation of distribution platforms like IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), we expect the online content market in Singapore to grow at a pace faster than ever before. Apart from Western content, the popularity of content from South Korea, Japan, China and India for local subscribers is also expected to increase

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