With deregulation of the media, telecom and ISP markets and growing IPO fever across Asia, unprecedented opportunities are opening up for traditional media players, yellow pages publishers, content aggregators, Webzines, e-commerce sites, mobile telephone operators, and other technology players in the region.
"The media are not just reporting the news: they are now making the news. The news and entertainment media are becoming increasingly important players in the world of emerging and converging digital technologies ranging from the Web to mobile phones and other consumer access devices," said Mr Vijay Menon, secretary general of Singapore-based AMIC.
Three key trends are emerging in the Asian mediascape: the rise of new technology platforms and associated socio-economic behaviour patterns such as NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service for mobile Internet access in Japan; the growing clout of countries like India, Singapore and the Philippines as centres of outsourced Web content development; and the rise of the "digital keiretsu" or networks of Web properties via mergers, acquisitions and alliances.
Though m-commerce and e-business may be the hottest buzzwords of the day, it may be high-quality, contextually relevant content that will be a key differentiator between competing online commerce sites. In other words, we are now witnessing a "content renaissance" as site publishers, device manufacturers and service providers focus on incorporating branded, high-value content.
Across Asia, content alliances are being formed via international partnerships, cross-media tie-ups, event coverage, Web suites, ISP partnerships, content re-packagers, Intranet products, and device distribution deals.
Online, MTV Asia, and CNet for the SouthEast Asian market, and is launching shortly in India as well.
High-profile events like international sports tournaments and elections in Asia have spawned numerous content-alliancing initiatives. Newswire Agence France Presse and Chinese portal China.com have announced an alliance for joint coverage of the Olympics later this year in Chinese and English-language sites.
Instead of setting up media properties in just one country, several media groups have capitalised on regional similarities and set up suites of sites for related countries. A good example is the family of Chinese sites China.com, Hongkong.com, and Taiwan.com, which exploit alliancing opportunities between content providers and advertisers in each constituent country.
Numerous alliances are also emerging between creators of news content and organisations who re-package news into e-mailbased newsletters, or provide abstracts and compilations of related news. Hubs or marketspaces for the online buying and selling of content are also emerging, such as iSyndicate.com and ScreamingMedia.com. While parts of the world like Asia may be lagging behind the US and Europe in PC penetration, the reach of other devices like television, cell phones, kiosks and pagers is comparatively high, thus opening up new alliances in the Internet's "third phase" or "consumer device phase".
A star performer in this space is Japanese telecom NTT's cellular arm DoCoMo, whose one-year-old iMode service for mobile Net access has already surpassed the six million subscriber mark.
Yahoo has tied up with four mobile phone firms in Taiwan to carry its Chinese-language WAP portal which includes news, email and weather forecasts. Yahoo has also taken a 5 per cent stake in the online business of Taiwan's China Times media group.
Set-top box manufacturer MyWeb has struck a deal with Beijing Telegraph and the Xinhua newswire for delivering Chinese language Internet content via cable TV. In their desire to increase "stickiness" of their sites for their subscribers, ISPs from Asia to South Korea are turning to content providers and portals to provide a more meaningful online experience for users as soon as they log in.
Another market emerging is that of the corporate desktop. Despite the initial hype about "push" technologies, there is still demand for news content and business information delivered directly to organisational Intranets, for subsequent access and analysis by organisational users without repeated visits to external news sites.
In addition to news and archival content, huge alliancing opportunities are opening up for creators of business listings (like yellow pages directories) and trade inquiry services. Similar moves are beginning in India. The growth of the Asian Internet user base has already altered publishing patterns of some US and European players in the region, such as the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal. "We used to delay the publication time of the Asian edition so that we could include closing prices of US stock, but have now switched to e-mail updates," said Mr Reginald Chua, editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal.
The Korean government is also investing in multilingual translation technologies so that the six million users of the Net in Korea can access English-language content on the Web.
In the US, ever since the days of the Starr report, the Internet has taken centre stage as a key medium for disseminating critical civic information, said Prof Anju Grover Chaudhary, journalism professor at Howard University in Washington. Traditional and online media operations will play complementary journalistic roles in the "technitorial age," she said.
Other services like digital audio broadcasting (DAB) will spur interlinked offerings like music listening, online discography, MP3 downloads, and ultimately online purchases of featured music albums, said Mr Rafael Oei of Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. DAB will also seriously challenge the linear content programming structure of radio stations, he said.
All this may sound like music to the ears of media organisations, content players, and multimedia artists. But challenges remain in the areas of finding a sustainable business model for online media networks, managing the e-commerce transition from media player to online merchandiser, infusing the right doses of new media creativity in traditional organisations, stemming the "dot.com exodus", handling unchecked copyright violations, ensuring online privacy, bridging the "digital divide", finding accurate market statistics, including a consumer-friendly voice in Internet governance, creating appropriate regulatory environments, and protecting children from objectionable content on the Net.
Traditional publishers also need to be more responsive to feedback coming in to their Web sites, said Mr Andreas Becker, a media specialist at German consulting firm Diebold.
"Getting the regulatory house in order [on telecommunications] remains a primary challenge in much of Asia," said Mr Mark Hukill, professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Kiosks and community centres will be key in extending the fruits of the Internet revolution to a wider use base. In Indian states like Gujarat, initiatives have been launched by the state government to bootstrap Internet access in rural areas via setting up over 2,000 kiosks and promoting a bilingual government information service, said Mr Mukesh Patel, managing director of Applitech Education in Ahmedabad.
While there is much talk of deregulation in the Internet age, the issue is really more of re-regulation and self-regulation, according to a paper submitted by Mr Stefaan Verhulst, media specialist at Oxford University.
The explosion of Internet and mobile access in Asia continues unabated. "Out of three billion people in Asia, more than two-thirds are less than 35 years of age. They have grown up in an expansive and expanding environment, and are finely in tune with new media, awareness of outside influences, and a sense of momentum," said Mr Frank Brown, president of MTV Networks.
The writer can be reached at madanr@microland.net
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