The upcoming release of 2 million tablets under the government's One Tablet per Child project and the proliferation of the device among general consumers are set to beef up the development of mainstream digital educational content as well as the electronic book market in the country.
The local digital content and ebook market are expected to surge by five- to 10-fold from 200 million baht in 2011 to 1-2 billion baht this year.
The government plans to distribute at least 2 million Chinese-made tablets to primary-school students. Some 900,000 units will be handed over to Prathom 1 pupils in mid-May, with 540,000 more to be handed over next year. Some 638,000 will also be given to Mathayom 1 students next year.
With such a large chunk of the tablet user base being school children, some are expecting the project will carve out a new "educational tablet" market segment.
It is also putting increasing pressure on international computer makers to lower their prices, with some considering jumping into the low-cost educational tablet market.
Nitat Maneesilasan, managing director of Openserve (Thailand), a leading ebook service provider, said the state's tablet project has increasingly prompted publishers to produce more digital textbooks.
"We expect the local ebook market to top 1 billion baht in value this year, up from 200 million last year," he said, adding that the market may double each year until 2017.
Pathom Indarodom, the general manager of ARIP Plc, organiser of the IT fair Commart Thailand, said the state's tablet scheme will speed up the growth of local digital content, worth an estimated at 2 billion baht this year
Excluding the government's tablet project, the number of tablet shipments would double to 1 million units this year.
Mr Pathom urged the government to promote the development of local educational content and mobile applications to serve the anticipated increase in demand.
Sukritta Phatcharasinat, an educational innovation executive of Aun-I-Luck Production Ltd, a local book publisher, said the company is developing learning aid content tailored for tablets in a bundling concept.
She said tablets have now become another learning device thanks to rapid technology development.
Ms Sukritta also said the government's policy of shifting from traditional textbooks to digital content is halving textbook prices. But digital right management and payment collection methods are the major concerns of the digital book business.
Chalermpol Punnotok, acting director of Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA), which is a part of the Information and Communication Technology Ministry, said the agency spent 20 million baht on the Edu-tablet architecture 1.0 project to support Thai developers in building their own software development tools for this planned tablet project.
The tools cover open-source conversion, authoring tools and Playware, which facilitate experts in developing educational content more easily.
The project will also cover security software that controls and filters inappropriate content such as pornography and gambling.
In the long run, Mr Chalermpol said the project would provide scoring software that evaluates students' testing scores, making ranking or rating popular mobile educational content possible.
Attaphon Satid-kanitkul, research manager of IDC (Thailand), a global IT research firm, said the government's tablet project is expected to stimulate the tablet demand for a short term. A sustainable demand might depend on the quality of both the device and the content.
"The state needs to get a proof of success on its tablet project within two years, or it will repeat the failure of low-cost PC initiated by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government," said Mr Attaphon.
Phatcharapong Kusuwan, chief operation officer of Click Connect, a Thai mobile developer, said the state's tablet project is also likely to spark other students' interest in educational tablets.
This will create a huge opportunity for Thai-language mobile content and applications, both bundled and through download service.
Previously, local content providers found it hard to make money from developing content as people were unwilling to pay. Developers needed to sell applications through Apple's App Store or Android's Play Store.He said Click plans to introduce its educational applications for Prathom 1 students in May.
"We expect the overall digital content market growth will double this year," Mr Phatcharapong added.
In terms of hardware, Apple Inc was in talks with the Office of the Basic Education Commission to introduce a pilot project by providing its iPad for use at schools, aiming to increase the number of users in the educational area.
Samsung of South Korea also announced a plan to introduce low-price tablets at 7,900 baht a unit next year to capitalise on increasing demand for educational tablets.
But Samsung has no policy to compete with the low-price Chinese-made products, said Pavich Vasanasomsomboon, product marketing manager of Thai Samsung Electronics.
The SET-listed Forth Corporation will launch its first Thai-made tablets by June, priced at 5,000 baht, competing directly with Chinese products.
Sawat Erbchokchai, Forth's R&D director, conceded that the prices of Forth's tablets may not be as low as Chinese-made ones because they use leading US-made processors _ on par with Samsung and other international tablet makers.
Accharas Ouysinprasert, the country manager of Intel Microelectronics (Thailand), a US-based chip maker, said the company has signed a three-month pilot project with the Education Ministry to demonstrate a "prototype classroom", allowing students at Samsen Kindergarten school to use its Intel-based tablets.
With Intel's reference design, computer makers can use its Atom-based processor for the government's educational tablet project, Ms Accharas said.
