News Broadcasting
Japan leads Asia-Pacific e-commerce market
MUMBAI: New York-based market research firm eMarketer has in its latest report called the e-commerce market in Asia-Pacific “a huge and still rapidly expanding one”.
Japan leads the market with sales last year of $38.4 billion, followed by South Korea at $6.3 billion. China and Taiwan are placed in the third position with each recording about $1.1 billion in sales. Meanwhile, India is targeting a market size of Rs 8 billion by 2006.
China, though currently ranked second in total internet users, couldn’t win the top slot mainly due to two key factors: Only 7.2 per cent of China’s population is online and the country’s broadband penetration is low. Still, the analysts call it as the “most promising e-commerce market in the region.”
eMarketer estimates that last year 73 per cent of all households in South Korea had a broadband Internet connection. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore are all placed ahead of the US in this important driver of online shopping.
The encouraging government policies have helped Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore to go ahead in the area of information communication and technology. Online gaming has also played a key role in triggering broadband boom in these countries.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
