iWorld
What’s driving the APAC broadcasting equipment market’s growth
MUMBAI: Here’s another research report, which echoes what everyone has been saying about the growth of OTT services in the Asia Pacific region. But it is from the perspective of the equipment that is used to produce, and transmit and distribute content.
Persistence Market Research’s latest report predicts that the overall broadcast equipment market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow healthily, along with traditional TV broadcast equipment, even as the IP converged broadcasting equipment segment shows the maximum growth.
Consumers, especially in APAC, prefer access to audio-visual content over multiple devices such as tablets, smartphones and desktops. OTT players such as YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime offer multimedia content that can be accessed across various platforms. This is a major factor driving growth of the market, says the report.
Another peculiarity of the region is that various countries have low electricity penetration that is creating significant challenges for broadcasters. Infrastructure challenges such as lack of electricity and mismatch cabling can negatively affect growth of APAC broadcasting equipment market.
Most key players in the APAC broadcasting equipment market are focused on carrying out promotional activities via industrial exhibitions to advertise their products and form strategic alliances with other broadcasting service providers to expand the reach of their business.
For the report, Persistence Market Research has classified the sector into traditional TV broadcast, traditional radio broadcast, IP converged broadcasting and asset management systems. And the APAC region has been broken down as follows: China, Japan, India, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand and the rest of APAC.
The report has concluded that the overall APAC broadcast equipment market was valued at $2.49 billion in APAC in 2015. It predicts that it will grow at an 8.1 per cent CAGR to touch $5.10 billion by 2024.
And this is primarily being driven by the convergence of high definition (HD) technologies such as 4K with IP. As per the report, 4K services are expected to be available on IP networks over the next four to five years via satellite launching and cable platforms.
Traditional TV broadcast equipment
The traditional TV broadcast segment accounted for 45.1 per cent share in terms of value of the total APAC broadcasting equipment market in 2015. Consumption of HD content in the region is increasing at a rapid clip, supported by rising sales of HD ready TVs. Valued at US 1.123 billion in 2015, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.1 per cent between 2016 and 20124.
The traditional TV broadcast equipment market is further segmented into cameras, monitors, routers, switchers, cable, transmitter, receiver and other accessories. The routers sub-segment is projected to expand at the highest CAGR of 9.2 per cent during the forecast period.
Content creators across the region are shifting towards 4K cameras in order to capture high definition video. This is being supported by sales of 4K UHD televisions that has gained momentum due to rising disposable income in the region.
IP converged broadcast equipment
The IP converged broadcasting is projected to be the fastest growing segment in the APAC broadcasting equipment market, exhibiting a CAGR of 10 per cent during the forecast period. IP converged broadcasting is the emerging segment in broadcasting equipment market, where the IP network is used for the content delivery by broadcasters. The convergence of IP with broadcasting has enabled broadcasters to deliver content in real time in a more secure and reliable manner. It was valued at $453.3 million in 2015 and is expected to hit $1.06 billion by 2024.
The Persistence Market Research report has further sub-segmented this category into media over IP, media contribution over IP and IP in studios and campuses.
The traditional radio broadcast segment was valued at US$ 544 Mn in 2015 and is anticipated to register a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period.
The key players in the APAC broadcasting equipment market include Media Excel Inc.(US), ChyronHego Corporation (US), TVU Networks Corporation (US), XOR Media Inc.(US), FOR-A Company (Japan), ORACLE Corporation (US), Unlimi-Tech Software Inc. (US), Grass Valley (Canada) and General Dynamics Mediaware (Australia).
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
