Tycoon T. Ananda Krishnan controlled entities such as telecommunication company, Maxis Bhd, and pay television operator, Astro All Asia Networks Plc, will continue to be the market leaders in their respective industry.

Maxis is still the market leader in terms of revenue, followed by other operators such as Celcom and DiGi, said Frost and Sullivan ICT Practice Asia- Pacific partner and senior vice-president Nitin Bhat said.

The market share ranking could not change dramatically in the next 1-2 years as there will not be a significant shift in the voice services, he told a media briefing on the industry outlook today.

As in the third quarter last year, Maxis held 40.3 per cent market share in terms of subscribers, followed by Celcom 32.8 per cent, DiGi 25.2 per cent and U Mobile 1.4 per cent.

As the mobile subscriber market heads for saturation with subscriber penetration rate at 117 per cent in 2010, Nitin said all players were looking at mobile broadband as the growth driver.3G still represents significant opportunities with wireless broadband having the potential to achieve up to 5.6 per cent subscribers by 2015, he said.

In the first half of 2010, Maxis lowered its prices for mobile broadband, eliciting a response from Celcom, and the two have teamed up for market leadership.

Telekom Malaysia has seen somewhat of a renewal in its additional service as it has unveiled its Unifi product and is on par with DiGi's net additional.

As for Astro, Bhat said, it currently accounted for all the other pay television subscribers.

It is expected to continue to dominate even after the launch of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) due to the access to popular content, he said.

Due to the fact that Astro has most of the exclusive rights to key contents, Nitin said its challenging task was for IPTV to start with a big bang.

Astro has 3.2 million subscribers. -- BERNAMA