ABI Research: Pay-TV Market to Exceed 1.1 Billion Subs in 2024

Despite the challenges from the increasing adoption of video streaming platforms, the overall worldwide pay-TV market is expected to surpass a 1.1 billion subscriber base in 2024, according to ABI Research.

Traditional pay-TV services in North America are mainly impacted by the competition of video streaming services. In the first quarter of 2019, cable, satellite and IPTV services in the region have lost more than 1.2 million subscribers.

“High-speed broadband penetration, along with the availability of multiple streaming services, is driving the declining pay-TV trend,” said Khin Sandi Lynn, industry analyst at ABI Research. “Increasing broadband penetration is, in fact, accelerating the adoption of online video services across different regions.”

ABI Research expects the fixed broadband market to exceed 1 billion subscribers at the end of 2019, with fiber-optic broadband access representing more than half of the total subscriber base. The impact of OTT on the pay-TV market varies from region to region—depending on price points, content choices and stability of video delivery across different platforms. Despite the increase in home broadband adoption rates, traditional pay-TV services will remain dominant in emerging markets.

“In addition to investment in content and advanced set-top boxes, investment in efficient analytics solutions are important for customer retention,” added Lynn. “Analytics solutions based on Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms can provide comprehensive insights on content consumption, prediction of churn, etc., which is valuable for content recommendation, improving user interface and proposing best-fit packages to customers to prevent or reduce subscriber loss.”