HDTV/3D TV News
MRG’s latest bi-annual IPTV Forecast shows that Europe still leads the world market, while emerging markets like China, Eastern Europe, Korea and Russia are catching up. North America is seeing steady growth by independent operators, and accelerated growth by the large telcos.
IPTV subscribers are projected by MRG to jump from 13.5 million in 2007 to 72.6 million in 2011, which is a 40% compounded annual growth rate.
Large European carriers are planning for future converged services with an emphasis on profitability, improved operations and sustained growth, but the research indicates that such offerings are still over 18 months away.
MRG, which publishes market analyses of new technologies for the communications industries, substantially increased its global subscriber forecast for 2011. Its April 2007 IPTV Forecast predicted 63.6 million global subscribers by 2011.
Len Feldman, Director of IPTV Analysis for MRG, said that the increased figure was in large part because MRG is considerably more optimistic about the probability for market success in China, India and Korea. MRG slightly decreased its subscriber forecast for 2007, from 14.3 million to 13.5 million, but paradoxically, its forecast for total system revenues went up from $2.1bn to $2.5bn.
MRG considers that Europe will remain the number one IPTV market in terms of subscriber count through 2011, but Asia is catching up quickly and will most likely surpass Europe in 2012-2013. In North America, Verizon and AT&T are growing considerably faster than previously forecasted, and Verizon is expected to be the world's largest IPTV service provider in 2011.
The analyst noted that MPEG-4/AVC is consistently replacing MPEG-2 in new installations, as MPEG-2 ceases to be sold even in cost-sensitive markets like China and eastern Europe.
Although DSL continues as the dominant last-mile technology, fibre-to-the-home is beginning to show more traction in both new and established areas.
Comments (0)
