SES now reaches 317 million homes across the globe including 156 million in Europe, where satellite remains the dominant means of reception.
At a presentation in London, SES senior market and business analyst Ricardo Topham said that satellite and cable remained at similar levels to last year, but that IPTV continues to grow its market share at the expense of terrestrial and cable.
“Worldwide has gained 23% since 2011, representing the equivalent of adding a TV market the size of Poland every year”.
Five million homes have been added in the last year alone.
HD content has tripled in Europe over the past five years, with SES serving 78% of HD homes. Mike Chandler, MD, Astra GB, said he expected to see more than the 30 Ultra HD channels predicted by Ofcom in a recent report, with the SES Monitor showing a high awareness of Ultra HD and its services.
The number of HD channels distributed by SES globally stands at 2,200, compared to 5,000 SD channels.
There is still room for growth; two-thirds of US TV channels are broadcast in the HD format, compared to a quarter in Europe.
At the same time, Chandler said he saw no sign of broadcasters withdrawing SD channels “We haven’t seen a lot of SD channels tail off in favour of an HD service. We expected to see plus one channels go, but we see them continuing and broadcasters doing well from them.”
Germany remains the largest satellite market with 18 million, while the UK has 12 million households.
