The global IPTV subscriber base reached an estimated 65 million by the end of 2012, according too SNL Kagan.
These deployments generated $21.9 billion in video service revenue in 2012, equating to 9.3% of global total pay TV revenues. A report from SNL Kagan examines recent IPTV market trends and presents forecasts for the platform’s growth during a five-year period, from 2012 to 2017, in the top 80 media economies.
SNL Kagan’s global IPTV survey finds telco TV subscriber growth slowed to 19.3% year over year in 2012, a figure down from 34.9% in 2011 and 35.5% in 2010. Of the 80 markets studied, we found 63, or 78.8%, hosted trial or commercial IPTV deployments in 2012, accounting for 8.6% of the pay TV subscriber total.
Over the next five years, SNL Kagan forecasts the global IPTV subscriber base will grow at a 9.1% 2012-2017 compound annual growth rate (CAGR), reaching 100.5 million homes by 2017, equating to an 11.5% pay TV subscriber share. IPTV video service revenues are expected to reach $41.2 billion by 2017, accounting for 13.9% of global total pay TV revenues.
This report surveys the current state of IPTV worldwide and presents SNL Kagan’s five-year forecast in six regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Our analysis covers the top 80 media economies in these regions, and our total figures do not include smaller markets.
Almost 76% of global IPTV subscribers are found in Asia and Western Europe, with 40% in Asia-Pacific and 35.8% in Western Europe. North America, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East account for only 16.6%, 6.3%, 0.7% and 0.5% of the global total, respectively. In 2011, China emerged as the largest IPTV market by subscribers, overtaking France, with an estimated 12.6 million IPTV households.
By end-2012 the number of Chinese IPTV subscribers reached an estimated 15.2 million, accounting for 23.3% of the global total. Second-ranked France hosted an estimated 13.4 million subscribers as of end-2012 while the U.S. ranked third with 9.9 million subscribers. In the next five years, we forecast Asia-Pacific will continue to host the largest IPTV population in the world, reaching 41.2 million households as China maintains its place as the largest IPTV market in the world, attracting 22.4 million IPTV subscribers by 2017.
In terms of IPTV video service revenues, North America represents the most lucrative IPTV video service economy, generating $10.4 billion in subscription revenues in 2012, accounting for 47.3% of the global total. Western Europe follows, with $7 billion in 2012. Our analysis indicates North America will remain the largest regional IPTV economy for the foreseeable future, generating $19.7 billion in IPTV revenues by 2017.
Improving capacity and quality of wireline and wireless broadband networks has enabled many telcos to move beyond providing content solely on the TV screen to offering TV Everywhere services on multiple screens. To better understand how TV Everywhere (TVE) and other over-the-top (OTT) video is shaping video competition and media economics globally, SNL Kagan maintains a global OTT entity database, tracking more than 700 OTT deployments in key multichannel markets across North and Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. The OTT entity database is organized by entity type: OTT Aggregator, Broadcast Catch-up, Connected TV, Game Console, Stand-alone OTT Set-top Box and TV Everywhere.
Out of the 76 IPTV players tracked in our OTT entity database, 39 operators from the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific offered multiscreen services at the end of 2012. The vast majority of TVE providers provided both linear and VOD content on multiple screens, with PC, tablet and smartphone access ranking as the most common extensions of traditional IPTV service.