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New Content and Innovations showcased at Communicasia2016, EnterpriseIT2016 and Broadcast Asia2016
MUMBAI: To set the stage for CommunicAsia2016, EnterpriseIT2016 and BroadcastAsia2016, visionary address speaker, Gerd Leonhard, Futurist and Founder and CEO of The Futures Agency explained to attendees that the next 20 years are likely to bring more changes to humanity than the past 300 years. With impending, colossal change upon us, this year’s event provided about 48,000 attendees from 102 countries and regions with a platform to engage in meaningful dialogue around new and future solutions that governments and businesses can deploy for success in a digitally transformed world.
“In addition to the Singapore government’s recent announcement of new technology initiatives, we also saw numerous products and solutions launched at our event over the last four days. These innovative solutions ranged from data analytic tools and devices, smart systems, robotics, virtual reality and more. As our lives and businesses become more digitised, we as event organiser are more determined than ever to deliver high quality and relevant events, bringing new launches and the latest insights each year,” said Lindy Wee, Chief Executive of event organiser, Singapore Exhibition Services.
Latest insights and new launches at this year’s events
Business and consumer expectation and consumption of mobility and connectivity have risen, with greater demand in quality and speed. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report that was released at the events, 5G subscription uptake was revealed to be faster than 4G, with a forecast for global 5G subscriptions to hit 150 million by the end of 2021.
In addition to insights shared, exhibitors at both CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia have showcased world’s firsts and latest solutions on the back of today’s hyper-connectivity. New launches included Panasonic Toughbook CF-20, the world’s first full-rugged detachable notebook, the first VR ready Dell precision workstations for enhanced experiences, MobiQuest’s air quality monitoring platform, iSense Air, Imagine Communications’ Ultra High Definition production tools and operational management platform, Ideal Systems’ new revenue-generating systems for broadcasting industry, and more.
“The world of VR is quickly growing beyond media and entertainment, supported by the advancement of technology that allows for optimal VR experience, whether consuming or creating VR content. Dell has been delivering immersive computing experience for many years and is committed in enabling VR partners across the entire ecosystem besides providing advanced hardware configuration. BroadcastAsia provided the perfect opportunity to showcase how we can support the democratisation of VR for the masses in areas such as Education, Architecture & Real Estate, Manufacturing, and Advertising. We have had overwhelming response at the booth, and look forward to developing new partnerships in furthering the growth of VR in the APJ region,” said Harveenpal Singh, Business Development Lead, Precision Workstation, Client Solutions, Dell APJ.
“We were very impressed with the level of real demand for the next generation IP-based broadcast systems. We had an overwhelming response to the new systems we launched in Asia for the first time at BroadcastAsia. From revenue-generating systems like Paywizard and Starfish right through to the revolutionary Electricfriends camera robotic system that we use to great effect with Vizrt in their augmented reality demos,” said Fintan Mc Kiernan, Chief Executive Officer, Ideal Systems SEA.
Michael Tan, Founder and CEO of Zap Delivery said, “Zap Delivery participated in this year’s CommunicAsia to showcase our new e-commerce delivery platform. The main objective is to increase awareness and solicit leads and partnership opportunities. Through the media attention and various tech tours, we were able to secure a few partnership opportunities in markets that we previously had no reach to. The exposure and returns were good, we will definitely be back next year!”
Repeat exhibitor, Rakesh Sabharwal, Founder, MobiQuest Solutions, also shared, “MobiQuest has been participating in CommunicAsia for past six years and exhibiting at CommunicAsia has been a complete pleasure. Every year we look forward to launch our new products and services at CommunicAsia as it provides us the best platform with right audience and superlative coverage. The event has opened doors for us to international business opportunities apart from increasing visibility of our products and services.”
New content invigorating line up at 2016 CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia
At CommunicAsia and EnterpriseIT, the inaugural Asia ICT Innovation Forum organised in strategic partnership with Huawei, also served as a knowledge-exchange platform. Attendees interacted with regional ministerial representatives, internationally renowned economists and global ICT industry thought leaders in their discussion of the impact of digital technology on the Asia Pacific Economy, the value of Big Data analytics, and more.
Commenting on the event, Joe Deng (Zhou Jianjun), Carrier Business President, Huawei Southern Pacific Region said, “We were strongly encouraged by the enthusiasm, meaningful exchanges, and potential collaborations resulting from the inaugural Asia ICT Innovation Forum. We believe our message of accelerating digital transformation through ICT innovation and ecosystem synergies to deliver a better connected world have been well received. We will continue to provide platforms for the meetings of minds and facilitate dialogues to create an open, collaborative, win-win ecosystem to advance the vision of a Better Connected World, which leads to progressive economic development, vertical productivity and efficiency, as well as sustainable and safe living. As a key enabler of the ICT industry, Huawei is committed to helping the telecom and vertical industries digitise their infrastructure, operational systems and business models to realise their business aspirations.”
The Post Production Hub at BroadcastAsia also saw overwhelming interest from visitors, drawing huge crowds daily to the booths and presentations. Visitors had the opportunity to hear from Oscar and Grammy nominated producers, award-winning film makers and sound and visual effects experts, with content ranging from modern filmmaking techniques and technologies, how Hollywood drama uses LED lighting, to the art of refining sounds bring scenes to life.
“The crowd at BroadcastAsia have been most encouraging, with overwhelming interest and support of my presentations and demonstrations at the Avid booth. I’m grateful for the opportunity to travel to Singapore to share my experiences and techniques with fellow sound enthusiasts. I hope the experiences I have shared might help fellow filmmakers and producers enhance the cinema experience for their audience, “ said Dave Whitehead, Sound Designer, White Noise Ltd.
CommunicAsia, EnterpriseIT and BroadcastAsia 2017 will be a three-day event held from 23-25 May. BroadcastAsia will move to Suntec City Convention Centre, while CommunicAsia and EnterpriseIT will remain at Marina Bay Sands.
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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.
