Competition is intense in Malaysian cellular market. Pricing no longer an effective competitive advantage; price war can only go so far. Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has eliminated the hassles of changing carriers. Differentiation takes different forms. Tactics are being deployed by three key players – Maxis, DiGi and Celcom – to enhance its ecosystems and content play is a popular one – DiGi with its DiGi Music, Maxis with Music Unlimited and Celcom with Channel [X].

Maxis venturing into applications with 1Store, quite similar to the strategy adopted by smartphone makers – Apple with App Store, Nokia’s Ovi, BlackBerry’s App World and Google’s Android Market. Smartphone players use the apps to enhance the perceived value of their phones and enhances lock-ins; Maxis is planning to use applications to enhance the perceived value of the Maxis ecosystem and ultimately, increase subscribers and decrease subscribers’ churn rate.

Expect Maxis to continue to use its scale to corner the market with first-mover advantage and DiGi with late-comer strategy i.e. let the market play out and then find missing gaps to position itself. Think Broadband Done Right campaign. DiGi is a late-entrant in the Malaysian mobile broadband market but the company is gaining market share with its pricing and service quality. For DiGi, it’s launch-and-learn strategy with a twist – let-others-launch-first-and-learn-from-them approach. As for Celcom, it will continue to position itself as No. 1 in all Celcom territories.

Maxis Unveils Its Platform Play originally appeared on GreyReview on January 25, 2010.

Also, the press release mentioned about 120,000 Twitter users, as of July 2009. The figure is misinterpreted. In July 2009, there were only over 200 users tagged with ‘Malaysia’; as of today, there are 377 users. The 120,000 figure is the total number of Followers of the then 200+ “Malaysia-tagged” Twitter users. WeFollow has since abandoned the display of the confusing stat, and now opted for a more straight-forward one – total number of users with a specific tag.

Nevertheless, DBI is somewhat an interesting survey to see brands people talk about online. Only 40% in the Top 10 Buzziest Brands in Malaysia are local brands – Maxis, Celcom, DiGi and Packet One (all are telcos companies). The survey monitors brands in these categories – Internet and Software, Consumer Electronics, Mobile and Telecommunications, Business and Consulting, and IT and Technology.

The DBI 2.0 was released yesterday and the full press release here

Over 3.5 Million Users and Facebook is Still Not Malaysia’s Buzziest Channel originally appeared on GreyReview on January 21, 2010.