Malaysia has emerged as the top 10 media consuming nation out of 52 countries surveyed by The Nielsen Company to unearth the entertainment technology ownership and usage habits of global citizens.
Malaysians especially have an enormous appetite when it comes to consuming digital media (any type of information stored in the computer, including data, voice and video), ranking fifth out of 52 countries. They are also prolific and sophisticated users of the Internet, with 53 percent having streamed or played content such as full-length movies or movie clips, movie trailers/ads, TV shows or clips from TV shows, music videos or other audio tracks or files, short video clips or individual/amateur clips and videogames in the past month.
Meanwhile, 41 percent have downloaded the same variety of content from the Internet over the last month. This ranks Malaysia in seventh and ninth place respectively out of 52 countries when it comes to the frequency of streaming or playing and downloading entertainment content from the Internet. In fact, Malaysia took third placing globally in terms of those who spend over 20 hours a week watching streamed or downloaded content from the Internet.
The findings emerged from the entertainment portion of the biannual Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, which reached 26,000 online users in September, including 500 Malaysians. Rankings were computed by measuring a range of scores in response to thematically similar survey questions.
“Malaysians are real entertainment and technology junkies. They consume a copious amount of home entertainment, music, video games and digital media. These tech-savvy locals are also thoroughly hooked on the Internet, streaming and downloading digital media content on a regular basis,” said Paul Richmond, Managing Director, Consumer Group, Nielsen Malaysia.
Apparently, the so-called digital divide between emerging and developed economies worldwide may not be that wide after all as the survey found that while Western countries tend to be heavy users of media hardware like DVD players and gaming consoles, next-generation devices like video-enabled handsets are more popular in the up-and-coming markets, particularly in Asia.
Out of the 52 countries surveyed, five from Asia-Pacific occupied spots in the top 10 list with the highest levels of usage across a range of media devices, with Philippines claiming the top spot.
While the Philippines was joined in the top 10 by China, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, the quartet of booming economies known as the BRIC countries--Brazil, Russia, India and China--fared even better on a regional basis. Brazil finished second to Philippines in the overall media usage ranking, and finished first in the music category.
“Piracy has also kept the cost of acquiring music down both on CDs and downloads,” Richmond said, noting that many Asian consumers largely skipped landlines in favor of wireless technology.
“The same leapfrogging is taking place with entertainment,” Richmond said. “For example, consumers are circumventing the need for a relatively expensive gaming console to play subscription-based videogames online.”
Other factors responsible for robust media usage in many Asian countries, include the broad uptake of mobile due to widespread use of public transportation and government policies maximizing broadband access in China and Singapore.
“For Malaysia, broadband penetration is only at 18 percent according to the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications. But with the government’s push to ready High Speed Broadband (HSBB) via fibre-optics by 2010 with Phase 1 offering 1.3 million premises, we can expect the country to continue its climb up the media consumption ladder,” said Richmond.
In contrast, Western countries tended to score better on usage of less mobile offerings like console video games and DVD players. But when it came to streaming and downloading online content, Eastern nations proved no match.
The Nielsen study also yielded a sense of which media devices are most popular across the world. The desktop or laptop computer (PC) managed to edge out the television set, with 77% of respondents indicating they had used a PC during the past month, just ahead of 75% for TV. The CD player finished with 50%, followed by DVD (48%). Mobile phones without video or Web capabilities were used by 40%, while video-enabled phones finished with 30%.
In Malaysia, TV ownership of 89 percent is slightly ahead of PC, at 87 percent. However, PC’s usage trumped that of TV at 85 percent versus 77 percent, pointing to the pervasive penetration of the PC in modern life.
The elevated usage scores of emerging nations can be explained in several ways. Emerging economies that tend to have low Internet penetration are more likely in an online survey to skew toward heavy media users. In more developed countries where Internet access is near universal, the sample will be a more natural representation of the general population, with both casual and heavy media users.
Another likely factor skewing media usage in favor of emerging countries is the average age of their online population is more than 10 years younger than in the West.
Furthermore, countries plagued by content piracy problems are also likely to perform strongly on results for the survey, which does not make a distinction between users engaging in legal or illegally obtained media.
Sumber daripada : Nielsen