Global IPTV subscriptions should top 65 million by 2012, a staggering leap from the 13 million households worldwide that currently are receiving broadcast via the Internet, says a new report from IMS Research, IPTV: A Global Market Analysis - 2008. Analyst Shane Walker writes that the 52 percent annual growth in the market will be driven by several factors including:
- Growing offerings by tier one and rural telcos in the Americas;
- A more competitive pay-TV market that's offering more localized content and triple- and quadruple-play offerings as well as new Internet-based TV services like VOD;
- An exploding market in Asia as China and South Korea uptake IPTV at an accelerating pace with the easing of government restrictions, and
- A continuation of the solid growth the European market has seen as IPTV providers continue to invest heavily in infrastructure and speed upgrades.
Shipment of stand-alone set-top boxes will grow to 21 million from the 4.7 million set out in 2006, with hybrid STBs, particularly satellite/IP boxes, seeing even more rapid deployment to the tune of 39 million units in 2012, Walker predicts.
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Much of the growth, said Walker, will be the result of falling prices for STBs, as chipmakers integrate multiple codecs into single chips, competition, bandwidth upgrades and an evolving consumer base that will move away from DVD to HD boxes. Increasingly, HD boxes utilizing the MPEG-4 AVC codec will replace older SD boxes. MPEG-4 AVC is also being incorporated immediately into many new deployments, and MPEG-2 IP STB shipments are forecast to begin decreasing in 2010.
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Telcos are pushing forward in the digital TV market as they see triple- and quadruple-play offerings from cable and satellite companies reduce churn and eat into the telcos' traditional voice business. Walker said telcos increasingly believe their best defense against the erosion of their market share is to offer their own bundled offerings, including IPTV. And, he said, that will push price points even further down.
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For more:
- Get the entire report from IMS Research
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