UK online TV market to grow to £181 million by 2011

According to a survey by Screen Digest, the UK market for online TV will be worth £181 million by 2011. However, the growth of movie downloads is expected to be much slower.

Screen Digest expects music to continue to dominate UK online distribution, growing from $90 million to $571.2 million by 2011, when an estimated 191 million single tracks and 21 million albums will be downloaded.

The online TV market is expected to generate annual revenues of £181 million in the UK by 2011, with the service becoming more popular as people are able to use it to catch up on favourite TV shows.

Broadcasters and pay TV operators will face increasing competition from services such as YouTube and Joost, and also hardware manufacturers such as Apple, Microsoft and Sony.

This will fragment the UK online TV market, making it necessary for traditional broadcast networks and pay-TV platforms to adapt their online strategies in order to gain additional revenue.

This will involve new initiatives such as focusing on offering video through their own websites or co-operating with the new platforms to syndicate as widely as possible.

The online movies market is expected to show the slowest market growth partly because of the comparatively small size of movie downloads compared to music and TV, and also because consumers will probably prefer to watch full-length films on home entertainment systems.