How many will watch IPTV

Stuttgart, Germany — 7th June 2007 — At the end of 2006 (see Fig. 1), Europe held the largest IPTV market share. For the four largest continental countries, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the number of IPTV users in 2005 has doubled to some 1.65 million at the end of 2006. But that still accounts for less than 2% of the total TV watchers in those countries. Yet even with a limited subscriber base, IPTV is indeed the fastest growing TV platform among the existing legacy platforms, such as CaTV and satellite. Terrestrial television is without a doubt increasing, driven by digital services (DTT), which are gaining momentum all over Europe. Whereas, the already established traditional TV platforms are somehow suffering from competition with these new services. Other European countries where IPTV has been launched — Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK — account for some 550 000 IPTV users at the end of 2006, which brings the total number of subscribers in Europe to about 2.2 million. By the end of 2007, it could be expected that the number of IPTV users reach some 4.5 million.

The largest IPTV market is indeed France — accounting for over 60% of the subscriber base among the four countries — where a specific competitive situation has been pushing broadband services with high speeds and advanced applications. In France, IPTV has already started as early as 2003 and evolved to about 1 million subscribers at the end of 2006. A figure that could top to some 1.6 million subscribers by the end of 2007. The second largest market is Spain, accounting for some 450 000 subscribers at the end of 2006, projected to soar to about 1 million by the end of 2007. In Germany, the IPTV market is very sluggish due to the absence of competitive price offers — if excluding Telecom Italia’s Hanse-net, with limited offer only to some northern cities — with the only local incumbent Deutsche Telekom marketing nationwide, a quite expensive triple play offer. Optimistically, the German IPTV market could represent some 700 000 subscribers by end-2007, more likely some 250 000. In Italy, there is a typical situation of “much-ado-about-nothing”, where despite large titles in the press and a lot of talking about the most advanced carriers in Europe, Fastweb, the number of IPTV subscribers remains limited to about 200 000 at the end of 2006, a number that could be set to double by the end of 2007. Seeing these figures, IPTV is after all, a very niche product, although the potential of IPTV should be seen in relation to broadband connections and penetration. At the end of 2006, on 42.5 million broadband connections in the four markets, IPTV users represented only 4% of all broadband subscribers. By the end of 2007, with over 47 million broadband subscribers expected, IPTV users could double its share to about 8%.

Please visit http://www.infocom-de.com/pressarchives/press_060607.html to see the graph.
Fig. 1- TV watchers and broadband subscribers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain (2004-2007, million).

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