From Warner Music to the Walt Disney Co, giants of the entertainment industry have latched on to Asia's growing appetite for wireless amusement.
The mobile phone's transformation from a simple talking device to one that offers entertainment has not only created new revenue streams for telecommunications carriers, but also for the entertainment sector, industry players say.
"The handset is already functioning as an all-time entertainment window," said Cho Young-chu, president and chief executive of South Korea's second-largest mobile carrier KTF.
The hotbed for wireless entertainment is in the Asia-Pacific region, where consumers are regarded as among the most receptive towards new mobile entertainment offerings, research group Ovum said.
"There seems to be a willingness among Asian users to take up new technologies, to try new things," Nathan Burley, a Melbourne-based analyst with Ovum, said.
Burley said South Korea and Japan lead the region in the adoption of wireless entertainment, with demand for mobile music the most popular service, especially among the younger generation.
His assessment was echoed by speakers at the 3GSM World Congress Asia telecommunications conference in Singapore last week.
"Kids today can't live without music and they can't live without their mobile phones and that should remain a very inspiring point for all of us," said Thomas Ryan, EMI Music's senior vice president for digital and mobile strategy and development.
"Young people love mobile music. Music is nothing if not a youth-driven phenomenon with over 80 percent of the market currently driven by people under 25 years of age," he said, citing industry research.
Music is the largest single contributor to average revenue per user (ARPU), after voice and SMS short messages, he said.
Another US recording label, Warner Music, said Asian consumers -- especially in South Korea and Japan -- are dictating the pace of change within the wireless industry through their appetite for mobile music, music videos and other forms of mobile entertainment.
Warner Music, EMI Music and other entertainment companies including Walt Disney have set themselves up in the mobile entertainment arena through tie-ups with telecom players.
Warner also has arrangements with other content service providers, including video-sharing Web site YouTube, to promote its stable of artists.
Asia is the largest mobile music market with sales of US$3.2 billion last year, says Warner, which has invested millions of dollars on popular Asian artists including Japan's Rip Slyme, Thailand's Carabao and Indonesia's Jikustik to position itself in the segment.
Walt Disney Group says it has mobile content distribution in 42 markets, 13 of them in the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand.
The US giant says more than 706 million mobile consumers have access to Disney mobile content through telecom carriers or other distribution channels.
In Japan, where the service was launched in 2000, the company has working relationships with all three mobile carriers to distribute Disney graphics, ring tones and games.
"Our approach is to leverage our strong brands and properties to create great mobile entertainment," said Duncan Orrell-Jones, senior vice president and managing director of Disney's regional Internet group.
Disney seeks to bring its entertainment products to consumers "any time, any place," he said.
While industry players see a rosy outlook, they say the telecom sector and entertainment companies will need to work closely to realize the market's full potential.
"Given so many opportunities, given so many platforms ... it's up to us as an industry, we as content owners, to really come up with services and content that can keep them wowed and engaged," Ryan said of the youth market.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS