Global downturn no barrier to digital TV uptake
Editor ©RapidTVNews | 05-11-2010
New research from Informa Telecoms & Media has revealed that challenging economic circumstances is not curtailing the conversion of TV households to digital services.
The research calculates that about 85 million digital TV households will be added in 2010 bringing the global total to 517 million and digital penetration of TV households to 40%. North American penetration rate will be 86%, with Western Europe at 78% and it predicts that a further 89 million digital homes will be added to the global total in 2011, bringing penetration to 46% of TV households. By the end of 2015, the analyst expects the digital TV universe to amount to nearly one billion digital households.
Territorially, Asia Pacific will surpass Western Europe as the power house of digital TV. China is set to contribute a 136 million of additions, followed by India bringing in an extra 47 million. Even though both Asia and Western Europe accounted for a similar number of digital homes by the end of 2008, Informa believes that the sheer scale of the Asia Pacific means it has now leapt ahead, and will continue to extend its lead, and will likely account for 46% of the world’s digital homes by the end of 2015.
However, the analyst says that the industry should not ignore the fact that there will still be a large analogue TV market in five year’s time. It expects that there will still be 375 million analogue terrestrial homes by 2015, most of which in the Asia Pacific region.
On the upside, Informa says that this leaves plenty of room for growth. Within the next five years, Informa predicts hat a further 28% of homes will take digital cable, with pay DTH at 14% and pay IPTV on 5%. Primary DTT—defined as those homes taking DTT but not subscribing to digital cable, pay DTH or pay IPTV— will likely achieve 14% penetration by end-2015.
By the end of 2015, Informa expects that only 47% of TV households will be paying for digital services in 2015, up from 28% (364 million) in 2010. Including analogue cable, the total number of pay TV homes is set to rise by just 19% from 658 million (50% penetration) in 2010 to 785 million (56% penetration) in 2015, due mainly to the competitive attraction of DTT.
