Worldwide telco TV services in the third quarter showed an 8 percent increase over the second quarter as the overall pay-TV market grew to $55.5 billion, said ABI Research in its latest "Pay-TV ARPU and Revenue Market Data" report. The company said it expected the pay-TV service market to top $230 billion next year.
In breaking out provider segments, ABI said strong subscriber gains and an increase in telco TV ARPU are driving the revenue growth. "Telco TV platforms are seeing a significant revenue increase," says Jason Blackwell, digital home practice director at ABI Research.
Western Europe, which has a high penetration of telco TV services make up more than half of global telco TV service revenues. But, ABI said, it expects subscriber growth there to slow due to that saturation, resulting in slowing subscriber gains leading to a decline in telco TV's market share in terms of subscriber numbers and service revenue in coming years.
In 3Q2010, steady growth in pay-TV ARPU was seen across different platforms, ABI said, although subscriber losses in the U.S.-some 741,000 cable subscribers dropped their providers-sparked a decline in cable TV service revenue in North America. "Market saturation and competition from other, newer pay-TV services resulted in customer losses for some cable operators in North America," said ABI research associate Khin Sandi Lynn.
Telco TV services saw strong growth in the United States on both the revenue and subscriber side, said ABI. AT&T's U-verse service added 235,000 subscribers and Verizon's FiOS TV added 204,000 in the quarter.
For more:
- see this release
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