IPTV continues strong growth
A recent broadband report from research firm Point Topic revealed that the number of IPTV subscribers globally has reached 65.6 million. This is up 3.8 million in the quarter.
“While this is down on the record growth reported in Q4 2011, it still ranks in the top 3 quarters ever for IPTV,” Point-Topic stated in their Q1 2012 broadband report.
China still tops the global IPTV list. “Not only in terms of total subscribers, but their growth is significantly greater than other markets, at least in terms of actual numbers,” Point Topic stated.
Both France and the US have reported strong IPTV numbers and are accelerating their growth at the moment.
“As higher bandwidth solutions penetrate the market the IPTV take-up will increase. With affordable, and sometimes loss-leading, bundled subscriptions on offer the market is very much in the customer acquisition phase and in the face of fierce competition from legacy video solutions we are seeing a change in consumer perception,” Point Topic stated.
“In the US more and more consumers are ‘cutting the cable’ and shifting their video delivery to their broadband package. This allows access to a number of sources, far wider than available on a cable TV system at the moment and that seems to be the driving force particularly when coupled with the relatively low subscription costs.”
According to Point Topic, Asia is rapidly eating into the regional dominance that Europe has established in IPTV.
“China added over 3 times as many IPTV subscribers in the quarter as its nearest competitor and that gap is likely to increase even further as France starts to suffer from saturation and the US, where competition for video delivery is at its fiercest, continues its relatively slow growth,” the report stated.
“Overall however we are seeing IPTV becoming a mass market service with broadband deployments of sufficient bandwidth and quality reaching more and more subscribers and the pricing, particularly in bundles, making it more attractive than other options.”
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