馬來西亞首屆創意内容買賣集會貿易額達3億8500萬

RM385 MILLION WORTH OF SALES


THE FIRST MSC MALAYSIA CREATIVE CONTENT BUYER FLY IN PROGRAMME ACHIEVES STERLING SUCCESS

KUALA LUMPUR, 24 August 2007 (Friday) – The inaugural MSC Malaysia Creative Multimedia and Content Buyer Fly In (BFI) programme organised yesterday achieved sterling success beyond expectation with RM385 million worth of sales. The exceptional amount was a result of 182 business-to-business meetings and pitches that took place throughout the day.

Organised by a division of MDeC, the custodian of the MSC Malaysia initiative and promoter and developer of ICT in Malaysia, the BFI was meant to tap into the USD600 billion dollar global industry.

“This is a pleasant surprise and a testimony of our creative talents. I believe Malaysia is now ready to offer its creative and digital contents to the world,” said MDeC chief executive officer Badlisham Ghazali.

He said that it was possible that once the news of the success were out, it would spark the local digital content value chain and generate long-term profitable global business opportunities for the local players.

Badlisham said Malaysia had been producing contents for the world since the Fifties, citing the late P. Ramlee as an example.

The iconic and legendary producer, actor, singer, host, scriptwriter and song writer had produced hundreds of award-winning feature films and movies for Shaw Brothers of Hong Kong while our animators and artists had been doing work for Japan since the Seventies by being the creative force behind a few famous Japanese cartoons such as Doraemon.

He said, in addition to promoting the growth of the industry, one of MDeC’s roles was to support and encourage Technology and Creative Multimedia industries to penetrate the international market as at present there were very few local animation companies that had achieved this kind of success.

“We are confident that our companies have the potential to reach a global audience in the near future,” he said.

On another note, Badlisham said there were many of these animators and creative talents in Malaysia who were just waiting to be discovered.

“With the right training and guidance, we believe that the local animation industry can achieve greater heights and be recognised as a global player. Hence, this will create more job opportunities for this pool of creative talents and indirectly help to expand the local animation market,” he explained.

Complementing the recently launched Malaysian Animation Creative Content Centre (MAC3) the BFI formed the bridge to showcase local intellectual property (IP), increase exposure for creative local IPs to key players in the global digital content industry.

“The global digital content industry is currently thriving and there is an increasing demand of fresh creative content for animation, computer games, mobile content and digital comic from both developing nations and developed countries. It is a global industry that is worth USD600 billion and growing with opportunities for high profit margins.

As a thriving new economic sector, the digital content industry is skewed to generate huge returns on a national scale. With the numerous initiatives and strategies planned as part of the MSC Malaysia initiative already put in place, the results have already been overwhelming. To illustrate the fruits of these efforts is the creation of Malaysia’s first ever animation project Saladin that recently bagged the Tokyo Big Sight Award at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007, the world’s largest anime exhibition.

Over the next few years, we will place heavier emphasis to promote and tell the world that Malaysians have the capability and is committed to grow the industry via strategic collaborations with foreign partners. Therefore, partner with us and we’ll make this work for you as well as for us.

“It is the optimal time for young graduates to consider entering the digital content industry as a serious career move as the infrastructure and financial funding is already in place, while the possibilities for global success and attractive financial returns are endless.” added Badlisham.
With increasing participation from the local digital content producers, increasing standards of local intellectual property with a global market appeal, and platforms such as the BFI to engage local and foreign collaborations in future projects, the digital content industry engine has already begun to turn and prove its financial worth.