While cable providers still control the lion’s share of the pay-TV market, that share is sliding as IPTV services grow worldwide. IPTV services are growing faster than any other form of pay TV, according to the latest update to Pay TV Subscriptions, from ABI Research. The number of IPTV subscribers will double by 2015, the report predicted.
Under pressure from lower-cost IPTV providers, some cable operators have already begun to cut prices. Cable providers till control around 70 percent of the global pay-TV market, but “the cable-TV market is declining in some countries, especially in Western Europe and North America," said ABI research associate Khin Sandi Lynn. Not only are those developed markets reaching saturation, but aggressive competition from IPTV operators, chiefly telcos, is luring customers away from traditional cable.
IPTV’s share of the overall pay-TV market, according to ABI, will increase from 6 percent today to 11 percent in 2015.
Revenue from IPTV services will also grow at a better-than-25-percent clip over the next four years, according to the latest update from Multimedia Research Group’s IPTV Tracking Service. Revenue from such services will reach $46 billion in 2014, MRG forecast. The IPTV market in 2010 is worth $17.5 billion.
While early deployments are occurring in North America, with both Verizon and AT&T adding about 1 million subscribers apiece in 2009, the fastest growth going forward will come from the developing economies of Asia, such as China and India. In 2014, the research firm found, Europe will have 45 percent of the global IPTV market, Asia will be second at 31 percent, and North America will follow at 19 percent. Lower prices in Asia will keep average revenue per user below ARPUs in the West, however.
