Digital Pay TV to grow 173% in five years

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Indian Digital Pay TV (DPTV) market will grow by 173% in the next five years, says a recent report of Media Partner Asia (MPA).

India and China will have a growth rate of around 173 % in the DPTV in the next five years. However, China will remain far ahead of India when it comes to the number of subscribers for Digital Pay TV.

The report says that India will have 21.36 mn DPTV subscribers by the end of 2009 and 58.30 mn by the end of 2014. However, China, India's nearest rival in Asia, will have 74.47 mn subscribers by the end of the current year. The number will grow to 204.45 mn by the end of 2014, witnessing almost 174% growth rate.

Alan Dishington, Sales Director, NDS, says India has a huge potential for digital TV as well as DTH. The country has 80 mn cable homes, so there is huge untapped market for digital pay TV or DTH. He pointed out that "As India is a cost conscious market the biggest challenge against an operator is to provide services at affordable price to the customer as ARPU for pay TV in India is around $4-5 which is very low in comparison with the UK and the US where ARPU is $60-70," he said.

The MPA research shows that the top 40 pay-TV operators in Asia added an aggregate of 5.8 million new subscribers over 1H 2009, taking their combined customer base to 65.3 million, which accounts for around a third of the installed pay-TV base across the region. MPA forecasts indicate that these operators will end the year with 70.7 million subscribers, implying annual net adds of 11.3 million and close to 20% annual growth.

Subscriber growth has been significant in low-ARPU emerging markets such as China and India, where cable and DTH, respectively, have led the way. Subscriber and ARPU growth has softened in Singapore and Hong Kong and churn has grown in Indonesia, but customer growth remains robust in Thailand, Malaysia and, for the most part, Australia. The growth of IPTV has provided a much needed boost to the saturated Japan market. More than 70% of the 40 operators' user base had been upgraded to DTV by the end of June due to momentum in China, Australia, Japan and Korea, and a recent cable DTV relaunch in Taiwan. However, India has disappointed in terms of cable DTV growth.

akhileshs@cybermedia.co.in