274 million digital TV households by 2012

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 20:12

IT Industry - Market

Western Europeans and North Americans are switching off old fashioned televisions and switching on to digital TV in their millions as analog transmissions fast approach that final termination deadline...

In the US analog television is pretty much a dead man walking, with the switch-off of services mandated for February 2009. Most Western European countries have a little longer, until 2012, to make the switch from analog to digital TV.

Vast numbers of people are not bothering to wait until the last minute, according to the just published 'Western European and US Digital TV Adoption, 2008 (Strategic Focus)' report.

"DTV will grow an average of 12 percent year-on-year, with particularly strong adoption in the near term as broadcasters terminate analog terrestrial television" says Chris Khouri, analyst for media and broadcasting at Datamonitor and the report's author.

Khouri goes on to reveal that there were some 158 million households using digital television services in Western Europe and the US last year. This, he predicts, will grow to an estimated 274 million by 2012.

The demand is, of course, being driven by necessity as those termination dates for the last analog TV transmissions get ever nearer. But that is far from being the be all and end all of it.

Consumers are also demanding the kind of 21st century value-added broadcasting that only digital TV makes possible. Enhanced features, greater breadth of content and bundled communications offerings are all reasons cited by Datamonitor in the report.

The report covered the uptake of DTV services in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

It states that by the end of 2007, 54 percent  of homes in Europe and the US had some form of DTV service and predicts that this will rise to 88 percent by no later than the end of 2012. This is, it concludes, primarily due to an increase in digital terrestrial television households.

DTT households in Europe and the US are expected to grow from 26 million in 2007 to 55 million by 2012, an average yearly growth of 16 percent. IPTV services are expected to show the strongest average yearly growth of 28 percent, reaching almost 23 million households by 2012.

Satellite services will only see a growth rate of 5.5 percent, but that still equates to an increase of some 20 million subscribers by 2012 - meaning a reach of 86 million households.
 
"Pay-TV platforms - such as cable, satellite, and IPTV - are facing new challenges to ensure that their services remain compelling and attractive", says Khouri. "For many service operators, this challenge is growing increasingly pertinent as non-traditional competitors enter into the marketplace."