On Sep 29, SPH Magazines acquired Hardware Zone (HWZ), a leading IT media company in Asia, and its subsidiaries for $7.1 million. HWZ has operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, China and Australia. It also publishes many IT magazine titles such as HWM, GameAxis Unwired and PHOTOVIDEOi. It also operates the online portal: www.hardwarezone.com which has monthly pageviews of more than 35 million.

By acquiring HWZ, SPH Magazines will gain access to the tech savvy audience in the region and also HWZ.com's strong community of forum followers. This move will strengthen SPH's foothold into the digital world, expanding beyond their print portfolio.

MSN launches a Beta version of Soapbox, a clone of the runaway success, You Tube. Microsoft hopes to tap on the consumer-generated medium to bolster its market share in Singapore. Currently, YouTube accounts for 46% of the audience in the Entertainment (Multimedia category), compared to WindowsMedia’s 17% & MSN Video’s 4.56%*.You Tube had garnered worldwide success and had recently been bought over by Google at S$1.65 b.

According to the experts, MSN's efforts are deemed late in this game and the offerings do not suggest any real innovation. However, their key competing point is their large pool of existing instant messaging users and their integration with Windows properties such as Live Spaces and Windows desktop.

Beta version is available at: http://soapbox.msn.com/

*Source: Hitwise Sept 2006

SpiralFrog.com will be offering ad-supported legal downloads of audio and video content licensed from the catalogs of the world’s major and independent record labels (such as Universal Music Group and EMI). The beta website will be fully functional in Dec this year, in Canada and the US.

The downloads industry had been growing exponentially and is estimated to continue to grow:

>> 60m MP3 players sold worldwide
>> 420m single tracks downloaded
>> Revenues from music downloads for MP3s and mobile phones totalled $1.1bn
>> 350 legitimate download sites in 2005, up from 50 in 2003

Source: IFPI Digital music report 2006

Research had shown that young people would be willing to endure ads in return for free downloads of music, as long as the brands & products are relevant to them. With free and legal music downloads as a carrot, advertisers will have another avenue to connect with the elusive tech saavy youths.

© 2006 Zenithmedia
© 2006 Optimedia
© 2006 Equinox

Photos credited to media owners