National ICT Month 2012

The National ICT Month (NIM) is a joint initiative between PIKOM and Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI). This is the fourth consecutive NIM to date – the first NIM was in 2009.

Dato’ Dr. Sharifah’s opening address	Cyber games competition

NIM, a month-long event, was officiated by YBhg Dato’ Dr. Sharifah Zarah Syed Ahmad, Deputy Secretary General (Policy), MOSTI, and promises a month-full of activities. For example:

1. PIKOM World Cyber Games (WCG) 2012 (7th to 9th Sep 2012)
2. Digital Lifestyle Expo 2012 (7th to 9th Sep 2012)
3. Leadership Summit 2012 (27th to 28th Sep 2012)

The Leadership Summit is to facilitate dialogue between leaders from the industry where PIKOM’s research report on the ICT industry in Malaysia (ICT Strategic Review 2012/2012) will also be launched. The PIKOM PC Fair would also be held at different locations within Malaysia.

The theme for NIM 2012 is ‘Innovation for Digital Opportunity’. According to Dr. Sharifah, it is important that Malaysians keep up-to-date with trends in the industry in order to keep up with the rest of the globe.

“The government continues to support this vibrant and rapid changing yet challenging industry,” she said. The collaboration between MOSTI and PIKOM will help the goverment to accomplish programs such as Government Transformation Programme (GTP), Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and Digital Transformation Plan (DTP).

The ICT sector was identified as one of 12 National Key Economic Areas and ICT’s contribution to the GDP is expected to increase to 10.2 percent by 2012. Back in Jan 2012, Google and Mckinsey & Co had found that the Internet is estimated to have contributed 4.1% of Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010 or US $ 9.75 billion of the 2010 GDP, thus placing Malaysia among the highest of the 30 fast-growing countries that the report highlights as crucial to the Internet’s future.

According to Dato’ Dr. Sharifah, the Malaysian economy has remained relatively resilent in the face of ongoing economy crisis in USA and Europe. The national economy is expected to grow between 4.5 to 5.0% in 2012 whilst IT spending is forecasted to grow at 9% to 10% this year.

“This is certainly positive when you compare with global IT spending, which is forecasted to have a 5% growth rate,” said Dr. Sharifah.

World Cyber Games 2012

Two championships will be held during this cyber games festival, a national-level, within Malaysia-only tournament and the other, an Asian-level tournament. Six hundred Malaysian gamers are expected to participate in game titles like FIFA12, DOTA2, Tekken6, World of Tanks, StarCraft2, and Counter Striketo, and try to win the national championship titles. This is also the first time that the Asian Championship is being held in Malaysia.

According to PIKOM Chairman Woon Tai Hai, online gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry and with more companies investing and developing online games, Multimedia Development Corporation or MDec has even created a dedicated division to promote this particular genre of the content industry.

Zynga, the developers behind favourites like Farmville and Cityville, has 240 million active users and the company is worth USD7 billion. That is how lucrative it is.

Winners of the Malaysian national championship will go on to the grand final in Kunshan, China (29th November to 2nd December) representing Malaysia at Asia level.

Wargaming and MOL Global Partnership

Wargaming has also partnered with MOL to offer it as a payment option to pay and play Wargaming titles. MOLPoints is a virtual currency used by over 2 million online consumers to acquire online credits and digital goods worldwide.

Wargming is an online game developer and publisher for MMO action World of Tanks and etc.

MOL has collaborations with over 150 game publishers worldwide, including big names like Electronic Arts and Zynga, and offers online payment solutions that aim to engage gamers and provide them with localised payment options. MOL has over 680,000 payment channels in more than 80 countries, and Wargaming would be able to take advantage of MOL’s worldwide presence to engage more gamers of Wargaming titles.

Digital Lifestyle Expo 2012

President of PIKOM, Shaifubahrim Mohd Saleh commented that Digital Lifestyle Expo is different from PC Fair, with the latter being more sales-oriented while the former focuses on ideas, trends and exploration.

The exposition features a few key consumer IT technologies targeted specifically to gaming. These devices are the Samsung Notebook Series 7 Gamer, Samsung S22B560H Series 5 LED Monitor, Razer BlackWidow Ultimate keyboard, WD VelociRaptor, Gooler Master K Series Mid-Tower Chassis, Gigabyte C1.Sniper 3 motherboard, Intel processor, Kingston HyperX Genesis and Kingston HyperX Blu memory modules.

PIKOM and the ICT Industry

PIKOM serves as the industry premier association, providing support, organising events to help businesses to better reach out to customers locally and globally. Malaysia’s official CIO is MDec while MOSTI serves as the premier R & D institution of science and technology (including IT).

During a press conference, PIKOM Chairman Mr. Woon felt that the challenges for Malaysia ICT industry includes the Malaysian brand, technology adoption and execution.

PIKOM is inspired to help the industry by contributing a bigger percentage to the national GDP. It was reported that RM50 million in sales was recorded at PIKOM PC Fair events in 2011.

“It is about lifestyle and convergence now,” said Mr. Woon, who also felt that the gaming industry in Malaysia is still in its early stage. He encouraged all parties to get involved and capitalise on the opportunity.

Woon also commented that there is an urgent need to monitor the progress of the gaming industry in Malaysia before any formal recommendations can be proposed for any kind of national scale implementations. He also hinted that PIKOM was looking into viability of conducting a survey to suss out the local industry.