VietNamNet Bridge – VC Corporation, VNG and FPT all nurture the plan to launch on-demand TV services within the Internet environment. Experts believe that Vietnam will see the online TV boom in the near future.

On-demand TV turns out to be a lucrative market

In the past, Internet TV was understood as watching TV online on the hundreds of websites allowing to watch TV channels developed by individuals or big enterprises such as FPT (onetv.vn) and VTC (vtc.com.vn). However, the services just satisfied the demand of the people, who could not watch TV programs, while they did not allow watching the TV programs or blockbuster films they miss before – the thing that only IPTV can do.

Therefore, VC Corporation and VNG have launched on-demand TV services on the Internet environment, striving to become the channels that distribute content for content producers, which can satisfy the consumers’ demand for watching TV anywhere and anytime. FPT is reportedly preparing to jump on the bandwagon.

In August 2012, Zing officially launched Zing TV, providing the most prevalent TV shows, films, comedies, education and sports programs, with the copyright to broadcast all the TV programs of the big TV content producers such as Yan TV, Yeah 1 TV, Real TV.

Zing TV has also signed cooperation agreements with television program producers such as Cat Tien Sa, Dat Viet or TV Plus on the exclusive right to broadcast their most prevalent TV programs, namely The Voice, Iron Chef, Vietnam’s got talent, So you think you can dance…

Prior to that, VC Corporation launched Soha TV service with Soha Phim store and some attractive game shows, such as The Voice 2012 and Vietnam Idol 2012.

Phan Le Manh, a senior executive of Zing, said similar models like Zing’s have been developing in the world, like Hulu specializing in TV shows, dramas, or Netflix and Amazon Prime specializing in providing movies.

He said the models like Zing TV have opened a new market on Internet, allowing users to access TV content at any time from any Internet-connected devices, including personal computers, smart phones or tablets. Especially, users can watch the missed programs without recording timer.

Manh went on to say that Zing TV would be integrated directly into the Internet TV series. If so, users would not have to spend money to buy additional devices to watch their wanted TV programs.

Added utilities can help retain clients

An executive of FPT Telecom said that at this moment in Vietnam, Internet TV and online services are considered the services that provide additional values to the existing services. These are the services all enterprises have to provide if they want to retain clients.

Enterprises have to compete fiercely with each other in terms of the quality of the services they provide and the quantity of contents on the services. However, the executive said it’s very difficult to charge fees on users for online additional services, except games, while the income mostly sources from advertisements.

However, the biggest problem now of Internet TV is the copyright, the profit sharing mechanism between broadcasters and channel providers. Experts say this would depend on how enterprises are interested in the business, because they would have to spend big money on this.

Meanwhile, an Internet expert said the existence of game shows or TV programs on Youtube, free to everyone, would hinder the plan to charge fees for Internet TV services.

Hulu,Netflix and Amazon Prime can collect fees from their users because the users have the habits of watching copyrighted programs, while they are ready to pay for the services used. Meanwhile, Vietnamese users do not want to pay for services due to the modest income.

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