Wednesday, 16th April 2008

INFO BOX

Don’t Keep Me Hanging, Says Study

Malaysia – Customer relationship managers of telco and financial institutions should take note of a study by Synovate that shows more than half of respondents (54%) cease doing business with a company due to poor call centre experience. Call waiting represents the biggest challenge for Malaysian call centres and reducing the call waiting time is paramount, as it impacts customer satisfaction significantly.

Two thirds of customers will hang up after five minutes if they are not attended to, according to the survey. Michael Beech, project director of Synovate Malaysia, said Malaysian companies should not limit their options when communicating with customers. He encouraged companies to explore non-conventional forms of communication to reach out to customers. "Using instant messaging or IM as it is commonly known is another viable option for companies, when communicating and receiving feedback from customers. Our results show that 30% of Malaysian consumers are in favour of using IM to contact a call centre while 14% of respondents are already using IM to contact a call centre," he said.

The use of Short-Message-Service or SMS to receive information about a company's products and services was popular among 31% of Malaysians while more than one quarter (28%) of respondents said they were willing to provide feedback to a call centre via SMS. There is also encouraging demand for the use of email particularly among teenagers and respondents in their twenties (15% of respondents). Synovate surveyed 1,018 Malaysians across all income levels about their call centre experience and satisfaction levels. Marketing-Interactive.com, 16th Apr 2008


SPORT SHORTS

* Indonesia’s AFC Asian Cup matches against Korea Republic and Saudi Arabia were the first and second most watched TV broadcasts of 2007 according to a leading media analysis company. According to the Asian Football Confederation figures published by AGB Nielsen Media Research revealed that the game against the Koreans, which ended in a narrow 1-0 victory for the 2002 World Cup semi-finalists, commanded 37.5% of the TV share while the 2-1 defeat to the eventual finalists registered 28.6% Although Indonesia failed to make it to the knockout stage, armchair football fans continued to tune in to the competition with Iraq’s victory over Saudi Arabia in the final pulling in 23.9% of the TV share, making it the 18th most watched broadcast of 2007. Soccer Investor, 15th Apr 2008

* Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has launched a campaign for its BroadBand on Mobile service on the JCDecaux Billboard network, specifically on the large billboard visible from the Ayer Rajah Expressway. The campaign targets tech-savvy PMEBs who require broadband internet access while on the move, and will run till the end of June. This initiative was planned and booked by Mediaedge:cia and is taglined 'Surf The Internet@ BroadBand speed everywhere'. Derrick Heng, director of marketing and communications at SingTel, said the reason for choosing JCDecaux was because the billboard offered visibility to thousands of daily commuters plying the busy expressway which connects from the west to Changi Airport in the east via the City Centre, thereby strengthening the campaign through repeated exposure. Marketing-Interactive.com, 16th Apr 2008

* Zee TV’s Dish TV pay-TV system says it will introduce HDTV programming around Q3 this year. Sales of HDTV-Ready sets in India are now topping 16%, and climbing fast, according to local sources and this is giving confidence to local pay-TV broadcasters that they’ll find an audience for HDTV services. Furthest advanced are well-established names like Dish TV, part of the Zee empire, with Jawahar Goel, head of Dish TV telling local journalists that he hopes to introduce HDTV boxes into the local market by Q3 this year. Dish TV said last week that its net subscriber position was some 2.5m homes, having added 86,000 new subs in March. This gives Dish a 60% market share of the Indian DTH market. Part of the HD drive is coming from India’s government, and it is thought that India’s hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games will be captured in HDTV, and available to its local population. Rapid TV News, 15th Apr 2008

* Licenses for China's homegrown 3G wireless standard may not be granted for another one or two years, a Reuters report said. The Reuters report said Jonathan Dharmapalan, partner and head of Ernst & Young's global telecommunications center in Beijing, predicts that the rollout of the local standard TD-SCDMA will likely mirror that of GSM in Europe, where commercial trials lasted for 12 to 18 months before it became widely used. TD-SCDMA stands for time division synchronous code division multiple access. The parent of China Mobile , the country's top wireless operator, started commercial trials of TD-SCDMA in eight Chinese cities at the beginning of April. China has promised to offer broadband-grade web quality via mobile devices for visitors to the Beijing Olympics in August but widespread commercial availability in China has appeared increasingly likely to be delayed well beyond that date. telecomasia.net, 16th Apr 2008

* Hong Kong-based mobile tech company Artificial Life has signed two licensing agreements with German 1.Bundesliga club Bayern München. The first agreement covers the rights to develop a series of mobile games featuring the club, which currently tops the German domestic league, while the second covers SMS Galaxy live interactive mobile entertainment formats. The latter will be targeted at supporters during half-time breaks at the Allianz Arena. Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said: "The partnership helps us to reach the leading position among the football clubs worldwide in the mobile business. We are sure that our fans will love these new mobile games and mobile services provided by Artificial Life." Football Insider, 15th Apr 2008

* Following its debut in the Philippines in January, AXN Beyond, a new English-language entertainment channel from SPE Networks—Asia, has launched in Hong Kong via IPTV operator Now TV. AXN Beyond, a spin-off from the action and adventure channel AXN, promises “out-of-the-ordinary” entertainment, offering U.S. imports across the sci-fi, suspense, horror, mystery/fantasy, paranormal and supernatural genres. The first shows to migrate from AXN to AXN Beyond are the newest season on Lost, as well as The WB’s Supernatural. The lineup will also include Pushing Daisies as well as the classics The X Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. World Screen, Rapid TV News, 15th Apr 2008

* The World Snooker Association has invited leading players to discuss the future of the game. The move comes after at least one unidentified top-10 player criticised the governing body’s inability create a world tour and failure to attract major sponsorship contracts. The WSA issued a strongly worded statement in their defence yesterday, saying: “We have also secured a new long-term, multi-million-pound BBC contract, broadened our broadcast platforms via Eurosport, and have substantially increased our overall income from overseas TV sales by over £1m. It is World Snooker's ambition to continue to increase the tournament calendar, year on year, expanding in Asia, and talks are underway to create new events in the Middle East and Europe. However, there remains a significant group of players who believe that the chance to expand snooker’s appeal was squandered internecine warfare in the 1990s. Sport Business, 15th Apr 2008

* Texan billionaire, Allen Stanford, is set to offer the England and Wales Cricket Board $20 million for a one-off Twenty20 match against a West Indies all-star side during England’s tour early next year. Stanford will meet ECB chairman, Giles Clarke, to discuss the proposals today. The billionaire has already bankrolled a Twenty20 tournament in the West Indies. Clarke also said that he will consider proposals for an English version of the Indian Premier League (IPL). England's centrally contracted players are currently not allowed to appear in the IPL and Clarke plans to launch his own Twenty20 tournament as early as 2010. Clarke will lead an ECB delegation to India this week to observe how the IPL is run and forge potential future links with the IPL organisers. Sportbusiness, 15th Apr 2008

* TV remains people's favourite mass communications format but viewers are more loyal to a programme than a channel, according to a global survey of TV by consultants Accenture. The vast majority of people watching more than three programmes a week watch them on more than three TV channels, according to the report. Accenture concluded that this "channel-hopping" trend showed that "consumers are more loyal to the content they want to watch rather than the branded distribution channel to which they may be accustomed". ATV, 16th Apr 2008


MORE NEWS

China/New Media: China Mobile Likely to Launch Mobile Internet Unit

China's dominant mobile operator China Mobile will integrate its internet services and found a new subsidiary under its controlled unit ASPire Technologies. According to a Guangzhou-based newspaper, China Mobile will appoint Ye Bing, chief of the customer department of its parent company China Mobile Communications, as the new company's general manager.

The registration work for the new company will be completed within a month, and China Mobile plans to expand its staff to 500 in the first year. Many industry insiders worry that China Mobile will adjust its cooperation policy with service providers after the new company is founded. And some even hold China Mobile will begin to do value- added services by itself.

But analysts say that China Mobile still needs to learn from mature service providers in terms of charging mode, industrial chain construction, operation and popularization, and try the convergence of internet services. An analyst with China International Capital said China Mobile has not severed its data and value-added services to the new company, because it recognizes the hazard of developing value-added services independently as a telecom operator. telecomasia.net, 16th Apr 2008

Global/New Media: Can Mobile TV break through?

A report from Juniper Research says Mobile TV will help drive mobile revenues to $7.6bn by 2013. But is Mobile TV a non-starter?

First, the positive spin for Mobile TV: Mobile streamed and broadcast TV services will become the most lucrative delivery channels for mobile advertising by 2010, according to a new report by Juniper Research. The report says that total annual adspend on the mobile will exceed $1 billion for the first time in 2008, reaching $1.3 billion by the end of the year and rising to nearly $7.6 billion by 2013, helped by mobile TV activity.

“While SMS campaigns currently account for the largest proportion of mobile advertising budget, the increasing popularity of mobile TV services mean that adspend in this area will rise from just $335 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. Meanwhile, idle-screen advertising is expected to become a significant contributor to total mobile adspend in the medium term, with revenues rising from just $7m in 2008 to more than $500m in 2013,” says the study.

According to report author Dr Windsor Holden: "While adspend in the mobile environment is still extremely limited when compared to the budgets allocated to media such as magazines, television, cinema and the internet, the opportunities it offers - personalized advertising with very high response rates, delivered to a device which is always in close proximity to the individual - will make it an increasingly attractive proposition for leading brands."

A year ago we would not have found much to disagree with in terms of the general trend highlighted by the Juniper study. But a recent statement from a senior Nokia staffer, Niklas Savander (head of Nokia’s internet services) at a conference in Nokia’s home city Helsinki, admitted that DVB-H, despite being Europe’s favoured mobile TV system, is not catching on. Savander told delegates that DVB-H is in a “bit of a turmoil”, and that its roll out is slower than Nokia anticipated a couple of years ago. DVB-H is deployed in just a dozen locations globally, and three of those are in Italy.

It is much the same with Qualcomm’s MediaFLO, which is only now beginning to find deployment in the USA with AT&T and Verizon. Recent spectrum purchases by Qualcomm will help, of course, but by any measure the system is at least a year late in its roll out. Qualcomm demonstrated a back-seat MediaFLO concept SUV vehicle at NAB this week.

Indeed, the only success that Mobile TV can justifiably claim is in South Korea (and to a certain extent Japan). Korea’s DMB numbers are truly amazing, with 9.69m T-DMB handsets (and vehicle units) in use terrestrially, and another 1.31m S-DMB subscriptions. Korea’s Broadcasting & Communications Commission, which was exhibiting at last week’s Cannes MIPtv event, said 43.7% of the T-DMB units are in mobile phones, 41.9% built into some sort of navigation device, 8.8% in PMPs or PDPs, almost five per cent available as “memory stick devices” for PCs and laptops, and 0.8% built-in to laptops.

But while this is praiseworthy, the fact is that TU Media, South Korea’s S-DMB mobile TV operator is – candidly – fast running out of money with some reliable sources talking even of bankruptcy. SK Telekom is reportedly injecting more cash into TU Media, needed to help stem losses reportedly of 270bn Won ($270m). News reports out of Korea suggest that $50m will be used to help keep the struggling satellite operation afloat. And one has to ask why would a consumer subscribe to a S-DMB service when there’s a free T-DMB system to view. The answer, of course, is the programming. But 1.31m subs is not enough to keep the system profitable (at $6-$11 per month, depending on channel selection).

Not that T-DMB is in much better shape. It was always expected that T-DMB would benefit from dedicated advertising, and 13+ million users is a mass market, but ad-support is thin.
In other words the jury on mobile-TV is very much still out. Rapid TV News, ATV, 15th Apr 2008