Malaysia 2020 Telco Market Landscape

As the ultrafast 5G technology looms around the corner, promising to revolutionize the Malaysian Digital Economy through the ushering of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, its important to understand the current landscape of the Malaysian Telecommunications (Telco) industry to comprehend the impact that 5G will bring to the market.

Vodus has conducted a survey to measure the Malaysian usage and attitude towards various telco companies in Malaysia. The survey is conducted with a nationally representative sample of 3000 Malaysians from 22^nd to 26^th May 2020 from the Vodus Online Panel, which consists of a network of online publisher portals from Media Prima, Astro and The Star Media that have a combined sampling reach of 17 million Malaysians (53% of the population) to obtain data that truly represents the Malaysian population. This study excludes foreign nationals who are living in Malaysia.

Which is the most popular Telco among Malaysians?

Maxis is the most popular network operator among Malaysians, with 28% of Malaysians citing them as their main telco network. The result also shows that there is a strong correlation between Telco's popularity share and reported revenue, where the revenue of Digi and Celcom are also neck-to-neck.

Maxis is the most popular network among the 3 major races. Digi is the 2^nd most popular network among the Chinese, whereas Celcom is tied with Maxis in the Malay market share.

How well are Telco’s doing in each region?

Maxis is also the clear market leader in all regions in Malaysia except the Southern Region (Johor Melaka and Negeri Sembilan) and East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak).

Who are the prepaid and postpaid subscribers?

Malaysians are still predominantly prepaid subscribers, with 62% of Malaysians are subscribed to Prepaid plans. Older Malaysians are more likely to be postpaid subscribers, however that trend is reversed among the millennials. Our study also shown that males are more likely to subscribe to postpaid (43%) than females (30%). 

There is a correlation between regional development and postpaid subscription rate where the postpaid subscriber rates are the lowest in the East Coast (Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang) and East Malaysia.

Who have access to home broadband?

East Coast region and East Malaysia are also least likely to have access to home broadband.

There is also a strong correlation between postpaid subscription and home broadband access where postpaid subscribers are more likely to have access to home broadband than prepaid subscribers.

Which online content platforms are Malaysians subscribed to?

52% Malaysians are now subscribers or users of at least one paid online content platform. Netflix is the most popular paid online content platform (watched by 19% of Malaysians), followed by Astro Go (watched by 16% of Malaysians).

How satisfied are Malaysians with their Telco providers?

The customer satisfaction score among the "big 3" Telcos are fairly close, with Digi leading with 70.1% satisfied customers, followed by Celcom (69.4%) and Maxis (68.7%). Digi also have the lowest rate of customers considering to switch away (21%), followed by Celcom (23%) and U-Mobile (25%).

Download the full report to find out more about the Malaysian Telco market landscape.