Astro Group Report Analysis

Market Overview

Competitive environment

All-Asian Satellite Television and Radio Operator (Astro) is the only cross-media group which has been provided exclusive license as direct-to-home satellite provider until 2017 in Malaysia. Previous companies like MegaTV (the first pay T.V that was introduced in Malaysia), have quit their operations due to financial losses soon after they launched in 1995.

This made Astro to become the sole pay TV service provider and have a monopoly over the Malaysian market. Besides Astro, another two Free-To-Air (FTA) TV providers including RTM-government and Media Prima who is the owner of all FTA private TV stations are also sharing the TV segment in Malaysia. Also a new pay TV has arrived in the market called HyppTV which is brought by Telekom Malaysia (TM) where TV content is delivered digitally through their high speed internet broadband. However, this pay TV is still very new and has not made any significant influence to the Malaysia TV segment yet.

Even though Astro has a monopoly in the Malaysian market, the existence of indirect competitors who to some extent influence the TV business cannot be ignored and put aside. Some of the customers still choose to watch local channels, online TV, illegal satellite TV in Sabah and Sarawak, DVD and VCD, and cinema rather than subscribing to Astro. This can be caused by several reasons.. The increasing usage of internet among the people will threaten Astro as more and more people would choose to watch TV online because it is free and convenient. Customers would also choose to buy DVD or VCD to watch their favorite movies or dramas rather than watch Astro because the movie release through such media is faster and consumers do not need to wait to watch the new episodes. The following table shows the competitive features of each source:-

Source of entertainment | Price | Program varieties | New Movie Releases | TV Service | TV Quality |

Astro | Costly | Local & Overseas | Slow |...