TELEKOM Malaysia Bhd (TM), through its global and wholesale arm TM Wholesale, is collaborating with Canada-based Swarmio Media Holdings in Halifax to provide gaming and e-sports services across the ASEAN region.
This comes as the Malaysian Government is keen to make the country a regional eSports hub, a move deemed as advantageous for newcomer Swarmio as it is for TM Wholesale’s diversification efforts.
Fitch Solutions Country Risk & Industry Research has hailed such tie-up as it believes that telcos like TM must continually improve their services to keep up with the technical specifications needed to deliver superior user experiences.
“Partnering with gaming companies is a means of doing so quickly, and we expect that this partnership will encourage independent games publishers – domestic and international – into the Malaysian market,” opined the research house which is independent of Fitch Ratings in a recent report.
After all, Fitch Solutions reckoned that it is common for Malaysia’s mobile sector – like its regional peers – to historically rely on low pricing, a constant supply of new devices and the introduction of an increasingly sophisticated – but affordable – range of subsidised value-added services to attract and retain customers.
“This, however, has made consumers accustomed to very cheap data which provides low profit margins. Although some post-COVID-19 bounce-back can be expected in the near future, organic growth for telcos is expected to be very limited as the Malaysian mobile market has peaked at around 46 million subscribers,” justified the research house.
“As a result, telcos like TM need new revenue streams and subscribers, especially among millennials and digital natives. This can be provided by video gaming and e-sports platforms like Swarmio which provide solutions for telcos to engage and monetise gamers.”
As a turnkey video gaming and e-sports platform for telcos, Swarmio delivers a major opportunity to penetrate such market.
“The Malaysian Government – which has backed the creation of an e-sports-specific industry federation and a common gaming platform – invested US$2.4 mil in the sector in 2019 and US$4.8 mil in 2020 with a further US$3.6 mil planned to have been contributed in 2021,” noted Fitch Solutions.
“The partnership will see both companies combine their capabilities to expand their respective service offerings.”
The research house expects Swarmio to leverage TM Wholesale’s strong reputation and extensive network to grow its platform’s reach with telcos across numerous ASEAN markets.
Similarly, TM Wholesale’s content delivery network can benefit from Swarmio’s artificial intelligence (AI)-based latency optimisation engine technology which increases internet speed and reduces the delay in the sending and receiving of data from the user’s computer.
Low latency is a critical requirement in gaming; as games become more complex, they require access to increased data and bandwidth. There is therefore a need to provide quick connectivity to deliver high-quality user experiences,” added Fitch Solutions. – March 30, 2022
