Report Sees Strong Gains in Asia-Pac Pay TV

LONDON: There will be more than 400 million pay-TV subscribers in the Asia Pacific by 2015, according to a new report, generating revenues of more than $40 billion.

Informa Telecoms & Media’s new Asia Pacific TV report indicates that there will be a total of 784 million TV homes in the region by 2014. With each household having an average of 1.4 TV sets, there are set to be over 1.1 billion sets in the Asia Pacific within the next five years.

Cable (analogue and digital) will dominate, accounting for 43 percent of the total number of TV homes by 2015, when 33 percent of households will still take only analogue terrestrial signals. In 2015, DTH is expected to have a 9 percent share of total TV homes.

Informa lists the majors China and India, as well as emerging territories Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, as markets to watch over the next few years.

Digitization will continue on pace, Informa reports, with a 21-percent digital TV penetration rate as of 2009 set to rise to 54 percent by end 2014. Challenges, however, persist, notably in the cable sector. Meanwhile, IPTV could become a significant rival to cable and DTH in some markets, with the number of IPTV subs expected to grow by 25 million over the next five years.