About 455 million digital homes were added around the world between end-2010 and end-2014, according to a new report from Digital TV Research.
This took the digital TV household total for the 138 countries covered in the Digital TV World Databook report to 1,045 million. Digital TV penetration climbed from 40.5% at end-2010 to 67.2% by end-2014.
From the 455 million digital homes added between 2010 and 2014, 111 million came from primary DTT [homes taking DTT but not subscribing to cable, satellite TV or IPTV]. Digital cable contributed a further 182 million. There were more pay IPTV additions (66 million) than pay satellite TV ones (60 million).
However, there were still 509 million analog TV households (terrestrial and cable) by end-2014, although this was down from 866 million at end-2010. There were 322 million analog terrestrial homes (down by 304 million since 2010) and 187 million analog cable ones (down by 149 million) at end-2014.
Of the digital TV household additions between 2010 and 2014, 287 million were in the Asia Pacific region; more than doubling its total to 513 million. China became the largest digital TV household nation in 2010, rising to 285 million digital TV homes (27% of the world’s total) by end-2014.
The number of pay TV subscribers (analog and digital) reached 878 million by 2014, up from 718 million in 2010. Asia Pacific increased by 106 million – or two-thirds of the global additions – during this period to bring its total to half a billion. North America (111 million) was the second largest region, although its 2014 figure was lower than in 2010.
China had the most pay TV subs by end-2014 (254 million, up by 59 million on 2010). India added 28 million pay TV subs, with Brazil (10 million more), Mexico (6 million) and Indonesia (4 million) also showing strong growth. However, pay TV subscriber numbers fell in Italy, the US and France.
Pay TV revenues [subscriptions and on-demand revenues from movies and TV episodes] crossed $200 billion in 2014, up by 14.5% from $176 billion in 2010. Cable (analog and digital combined) generated the highest revenues by platform, with $92 billion in 2014. However, cable TV revenues are falling. IPTV revenues reached $19.8 billion in 2014, up by $10 billion on 2010.
North America generates about half the world’s total pay TV revenues. In fact, the US recorded revenues in 2014 nearly ten times as high as second placed China. The US added $6.1 billion in revenues between 2010 and 2014, followed by Brazil with $3.0 billion more and China ($2.5 billion extra).