DITO targets bigger stake in Philippine mobile gaming sector

mobile gaming DITO
Image by Alexandru Nika | Bigstockphoto

The Philippines’ third telco DITO is hoping to be an active player in the country’s rapid rise as a regional and global gaming hub. DITO has kicked off a new partnership with the digital entertainment platform UniPin, making gaming vouchers accessible and payable through DITO.

DITO and UniPin will offer vouchers from UniPin’s partner publishers, including Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG Mobile, and Pokemon, among others. Once gaming vouchers become available, users will be able to check out by selecting the SMS Mobile Payment (DCB) option on the UniPin website. The purchase will then be subtracted from the users’ DITO phone balance.

“DITO and UniPin share the same vision, which is to provide the best digital services to every Filipino in the country. As we believe that the gaming community in the country has been growing steadily, we want to support them with the best access to gaming experience possible through the partnership,” said Jasper Evangelista, DITO’s Brand & Marketing Director.

Data from Statista shows that mobile gaming in the Philippines will continue to grow in the next five years, reaching 36.8 million users or around 36% of the Philippine population by 2025. While COVID-19 has accelerated this growth, Southeast Asia had already been set to become one of the fastest-growing regions, if not the fastest, before the pandemic.

DITO’s move to partner with UniPin may be one of its ways to catch up with the country’s largest telcos: Globe and Smart (PLDT). In a recent regional survey of 30 mobile operators, Globe and Smart earned good scores for 5G games and video experience, with 65.2% and 42.2%, respectively. TrueMove H, a Thailand telecom, is in third place with a score of 37.1%.

According to Consultancy.uk, mobile operators and telcos stand to benefit from the rapidly growing $75 billion global mobile games market. Quoting a report from Analysys Mason, analysts from Consultancy.uk said that there are plenty of B2C and B2B revenue opportunities for telcos if they are keen to tap into the industry’s growth potential.

“Operators should use the growth of 5G-enabled gaming to target the B2B opportunity and to build a mobile edge computing (MEC) proposition, which they can do in partnership with other operators and/or public cloud providers. As next-generation gaming ecosystems mature, operators should use their MEC, end-to-end network management capabilities to monetise the gaming service providers’ demand for QoS assurance, strengthening the go-to-market partner role,” said Martin Scott, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason.

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