This factor, Lew said, puts SingTel in a much better position than its OTT rivals to actually monetize the digital content and services it offers to subscribers.
Although SingTel’s foray into the digital services market remains in its relative infancy, Lew said that the firm was basically focusing its attentions on three core areas.
Firstly, SingTel sees great prospects ahead in what Lew referred to as ‘next generation interaction’ and predicted that in the future subscribers would interact digitally in a much different way than now with interactivity taking on a much more ‘emotional’ edge.
Secondly, Lew said that SingTel still sees huge potential in what he referred to as ‘emotional commerce’ – that being the process whereby SingTel does not necessarily sell products online in the same way that Amazon does but instead uses its huge bank of customer data to direct customers to content and services they will find useful.
Finally, and without question most ambitiously, Lew says that SingTel sees the TV business as one that is “on the verge of significant disruption” and claimed that SingTel was well placed to take advantage as consumers sidelined traditional fixed-position TV sets in favor of tablet and handset viewing.
Lew says SingTel is setting its sights on becoming a gatekeeper in the content business for its subscribers and will use its intimate customer knowledge to direct subscribers to content that has relevance and value to them – from whatever source it might come from.