Despite a welter of recent research showing that cord-cutting is accelerating on a global basis, especially in the US, analyst ABI Research expects the overall pay-TV market to grow at a steady pace over the next five years.
ABI Research’s Pay TV Subscribers market data report calculates that despite the increasing numbers of consumers switching from pay-TV services to lower-cost video streaming, the traditional services’ subscriber base will surpass 1.1 billion by 2024. This comes despite the first quarter of 2019 seeing cable, satellite, and IPTV services in the North American region lose more than 1.2 million subscribers.
ABI observed that the impact of over-the-top (OTT) services on the pay-TV market varies from region to region depending on the price points, content choices, and stability of video delivery across different platforms.
A key component of the market dynamics said the analyst was the fixed broadband market which it forecast to exceed 1 billion subscribers at the end of 2019 with fibre-optic broadband access representing more than half of the total subscriber base. Yet despite the increase in home broadband adoption rates because of access to such high-bandwidth platforms, ABI believes that traditional pay-TV services will remain dominant in emerging markets.
Looking at the key elements in operators’ strategies to fend off online, ABI cited the introduction of live streaming services integrated with pay-TV which provide lower cost compared with traditional pay-TV packages and the deployment of Android-based set-top boxes. Emerging markets were found to be embracing Android TV STBs to facilitate streaming features to their pay-TV customers. Airtel and Hathway from India, and Telkom Indonesia were named as leading operators from emerging markets which are deploying Android TV STBs.
“High-speed broadband penetration, along with the availability of multiple streaming services, is driving the declining pay-TV trend. Increasing broadband penetration is, in fact, accelerating the adoption of online video services across different regions,” explained ABI Research industry analyst Khin Sandi Lynn, regarding the Pay TV Subscribers market data report.
“In addition to investment in content and advanced set-top boxes, investment in efficient analytics solutions are important for customer retention. Analytics solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms can provide comprehensive insights on content consumption, prediction of churn, etc., which is valuable for content recommendation, improving user interface, and proposing best-fit packages to customers to prevent or reduce subscriber loss.”
ABI observed that the impact of over-the-top (OTT) services on the pay-TV market varies from region to region depending on the price points, content choices, and stability of video delivery across different platforms.
A key component of the market dynamics said the analyst was the fixed broadband market which it forecast to exceed 1 billion subscribers at the end of 2019 with fibre-optic broadband access representing more than half of the total subscriber base. Yet despite the increase in home broadband adoption rates because of access to such high-bandwidth platforms, ABI believes that traditional pay-TV services will remain dominant in emerging markets.
Looking at the key elements in operators’ strategies to fend off online, ABI cited the introduction of live streaming services integrated with pay-TV which provide lower cost compared with traditional pay-TV packages and the deployment of Android-based set-top boxes. Emerging markets were found to be embracing Android TV STBs to facilitate streaming features to their pay-TV customers. Airtel and Hathway from India, and Telkom Indonesia were named as leading operators from emerging markets which are deploying Android TV STBs.
“High-speed broadband penetration, along with the availability of multiple streaming services, is driving the declining pay-TV trend. Increasing broadband penetration is, in fact, accelerating the adoption of online video services across different regions,” explained ABI Research industry analyst Khin Sandi Lynn, regarding the Pay TV Subscribers market data report.
“In addition to investment in content and advanced set-top boxes, investment in efficient analytics solutions are important for customer retention. Analytics solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms can provide comprehensive insights on content consumption, prediction of churn, etc., which is valuable for content recommendation, improving user interface, and proposing best-fit packages to customers to prevent or reduce subscriber loss.”
