In other
countries, television shows and channels come as their own as they present
themselves. For example, in California, if you flicker through the tv, you’ll
find HBO, ESPN and Nickelodeon. However, in Malaysia, if you flick through our
local tv station, you’ll find channels like TV2, TV3 and NTV7, hardly appealing
at all. One thing that you could find in almost every household in Malaysia
other than water and electricity is Astro.
Thanks to Astro, we are able to get
international channels through out the world, for a monthly modest fee of
course. After all, they do have to recoup for the satellites that Astro have
sent up into space. The MEASAT 1, is the first thing, alive or not, to be
originated from Malaysia to escape from our atmosphere. After that, Astro
further launched 2 more satellites, the MEASAT 2 & 3. With this advantage,
Astro was able to monopolize Malaysia’s television industry. Using this to
their benefit, Astro is able to increase their prices and the demand would not
drop as Astro has sort of became a necessity for the Malaysian people, giving
them an inelastic demand. However, from all the complaints about Astro being
too expensive and providing unnecessary channels, the people still have the
choice to choose to buy the package of channels they want and unsubscribe the
channels that they do not wish to possess.
Other
than the barriers to entry, it is very difficult for any new tv satellite
company to challenge Astro’s monopoly in Malaysia because of Astro’s longevity,
as they have been dominating the local tv’s here for 17 years (as by 2013). Companies
dream of monopolizing any market of any region mainly due to its advantage of
high profits. For the year 2012, Astro enjoyed revenue of RM3.2billion.
Astro
also enjoy the reimbursement of economies of. Astro's subscribers are as lofty
as 3.1 million clients, which makes Astro to have inferior average cost in
production.