HDTV/3D TV News
TV Markets Quarterly Monitoring from InfoCom, the independent market analyst, reveals that most of the television viewers in Western Europe preferred receiving television service over terrestrial platform in the second quarter of 2007.
Infocom’s research showed that, in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, the UK, Portugal and Finland, terrestrial or free-to-air TV viewers represented between 51% and 91% of the total TV market in the first half of 2007. In most of these countries, both analogue and digital TV are often free of charge or at a low cost.
The TV audience in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg preferred CaTV and satellite. In these five countries, free-to-air TV represents less than 10% of the total viewing audience.
These countries represent markets, which are traditionally highly cabled, where often CaTV subscriptions are already integrated into standard charges for flats and CaTV services are perceived as a commodity. This means that people are traditionally used to a pay-TV service.
In the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium, the share of CaTV on the total TV audience is exceptionally high at between 82% and 86%. Satellite television is the most popular TV platform in Austria where 53% of the total TV viewers prefer to watch television through a satellite dish. This represented approximately 1.9 million viewers.
The penetration of IPTV is most evident in Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden, where IPTV subscriptions represent between 1% and 7% of the total TV audience. The IPTV subscriber base in these countries, as a group, reached over 3.3 million in June 2007, or over 94% of the total IPTV market in Western Europe.
In other countries, especially the highly cabled ones, the uptake of IPTV is more difficult due to the strong competition of CaTV services, already well established, bundled in triple play with voice and Internet access.
InfoCom’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage. TV Quarterly Monitoring is only one of several Quarterly Monitoring Services that InfoCom provides.
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