KUALA LUMPUR (April 18): Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd has signed an agreement US-based Amazon Web Services Inc (AWS) to spur Astro's digital and business transformation as consumers' digital-based media consumption increases.

In a statement today, pay TV entity Astro group chief executive officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan said Astro's agreement with AWS would enable Astro to capitalise on AWS's cloud-computing services.

"The company (Astro) is incorporating a cloud and mobile-first, analytics driven approach to accelerate innovation in pursuit of new personalised experiences for customers across all ages. Accelerating our ambition to better serve the increasingly digital lifestyle of today's consumers is a key pillar for Astro.

"Our collaboration with AWS comes at a critical time, as we prepare ourselves to serve the next generation of consumers through products and services that best suit their needs," Rohana said.

She said Astro aimed to digitalise at least 75% of its current technology infrastructure, applications, and processes by year end to better serve its customers.

As Astro ventures into 2017, she said the company recognised its market strengths, which needed to be reinforced, and gaps the company needed to address to be customers' media brand of choice.

"Today Astro is in 71% of Malaysian households and growing. That equates to 21 million family members across 5.1 million homes with an Astro service.

"Our combined engagement with households and individuals across TV, radio, digital and ground events is second to none; our TV viewers spend 4 hours watching Astro daily, radio weekly listenership is at 15.6 million, our live events attracted approximately 500,000 people and our digital properties, which are resonating among millennials, register close to 5.8 million visitors every month." Rohana said.

At Bursa Malaysia, Astro shares rose two sen or 0.75% at 11:13am to RM2.69 for a market value of RM14.07 billion. The stock saw 632,700 shares traded.