When ADVANC Joins Gaming Services, How Far Will the Business Go?

To prepare its era of 5G, Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited or ADVANC decided to expand the business by investing in a new platform, the online game streaming services business.

ADVANC has approved the subsidiary Wireless Device Supply Co. Ltd (WDS) to invest in Digital Gaming International PTE (DGI) in Singapore to acquire 33.33% stake equivalent to SG$ 10 million or ฿266.5 million. 

Follow the acquisition, DGI is equally invested between WDS, Digital Gaming Investment PTE, a connected party of ADVANC that has Singtel Telecommunications (Singtel) as the same major shareholder, and SK Telecom Co., Ltd. (SKT) in South Korea, a non-connected party.

This deal was considered as a strong combination as 3 big companies in which expertize on their own field become partner, and worth to keep an eye on.

The new joint venture comprised of Singtel, a telecommunications business with reaching to over 710 million customers in the region, SK Telecom, an expert of telecommunications services and mobile game distribution in South Korea and ADVANC in which expertizes in esports in Thailand. 

With the amount number of 800 million gamers across Asia Pacific, resulting DGI, a provider of gaming content on an artificial intelligence (AI), has a dynamic to grow continually.

Apert from share of revenue of DGI, ADVANC expects to gain a business opportunity in data usage services. According to the gamer behaviour who usually spend several hours on a games, therefore the more number of gamer, the more data they would use, will provoke ADVANC to earn more incomes.

It is possible that in the future ADVANC would grow wildly abroad along with the growth in Thailand. In 2019, online game market in Thailand has grown with over 27 million active Thai gamers and a total market revenue was ฿23 billion, and expected to increase to ฿27 billion baht in 2020. 

Even AIS, a mobile phone service provider, still ranks as No.1 of market share with the subscribers over 42 million in the end of 2019, but the biggest challenge of ADVANC is that the new customer growth rate is somehow declining as most of a new subscribers were all move from other mobile operators.

Because of that, ADVANC has to look for a new gold mine, which now likely to pin on online game streaming services business. Interestingly, how far will gaming business enhance ADVANC growth…..?