IP & TV WORLD FORUM – LONDON. Although there were only 27 million OTT TV viewers globally at the end of last year, their number is expected to exceed those watching IPTV services by 2013.
Indeed, Informa Media & Telecoms predicts that by 2015 some 380 million people globally will be watching online video via connected devices such as TVs, games consoles or set-top boxes from the likes of Apple and Google, with growth driven by the popularity of such services as BBC iPlayer and Netflix.
However, while 163 million users will by contrast be watching managed IPTV services from the likes of Verizon, BT and Orange in 2015, the 380 million figure will still only represent 15% of total viewers.
Although the US accounted for 48% of OTT TV viewers at the end of 2010, this figure is expected to fall to 39% by 2015.
Furthermore, there are already more people watching OTT TV than IPTV services in the UK.
OTT viewing nevertheless still has a lot of ground to make up on YouTube.
Globally, there are some 1.8 billion OTT TV views each year at present, compared with 2 billion daily for YouTube.
