DALLAS – Subscribers to IPTV around the world are expected to jump from 2 million to 34 million between 2005 and 2010, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 60%, says research by U.S. firm The Diffusion Group.
North America will experience the most rapid rate of growth during this time period with a CAGR of 78%, followed by Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) with a CAGR of 61% and Asia/Pacific with a CAGR of 41%. According to the report’s authors, IPTV deployments in several key European countries are on schedule, with new launches expected in smaller Eastern European and Nordic countries. For these reasons, the EMEA region is expected to top 14 million IPTV households by 2010 with France, the UK, Italy, Spain, and German accounting for 87% of the total.
The number of North American IPTV households is also expected to be close to 14 million by 2010, with the U.S. accounting for 80% of these subscriptions, meaning the report figures there might be 2.8 million IPTV customers in Canada by then.
While the majority of 2005 and 2006 IPTV deployments have been executed by small rural operators (see MTS and SaskTel), TDG expects the new deployments by Verizon and AT&T to greatly increase subscribers starting in 2007.
Asian IPTV deployments, however, are expected to account for only 5.6 million subscriptions by 2010. "Although Hong Kong’s PCCW continues to push IPTV deployments, and despite ongoing IPTV trials in both China and India, consensus expectations regarding the growth of the Asian IPTV market are simply not achievable," noted the report.
