Recent reports suggest that global IPTV subscriptions are expected to jump from 2 million to 34 million between 2005 and 2010. North America is expected to see the quickest growth with aforecasted 14 million households by 2010 accounting for 80% of these subscriptions. While the IPTV market seems to be moving along slowly, albeit steadily, this has been due to small rural operatorsrather than large companies such as Verizon and AT&T, although that is expected to change as these 10-ton gorilla’s enter the space. What’s suprising is the slow IPTV deploymentstaking place in Asia as TDG predicts that Asia will only account for a mere 5.6 million subscriptions. This is primarily due to the impending launch of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT). “Aftermany years of political wrangling, the Chinese government is about to announce a single DTV standard for both fixed and mobile services. Once this happens, the government will start pushing moreaggressively the distribution of digital set-top boxes as a means of ramping up the number of digital TV subscribers.” The Chinese government has stated publicly that this new standard (dubbed‘Digital Multimedia Broadcasting – Terrestrial/Handheld’ or ‘DMB-T/H’) will eventually serve more than half of China’s TV viewers, especially those in suburban and rural areas. Until then, analog andbroadband based services may well find a healthy market for the few years to come.
“IPTV market conditions vary widely depending on the country or geography in question, entailing that individual markets will evolve and behave in very unique ways,” added Dixon. He also noted that a handful of individual service operators will account for 75% of the deployed volume with the remaining 25% split between hundreds of other operators. “These conditions will pose a challenge to all types of IPTV solutions vendors, one that requires detailed and flexible implementation and go-to-market strategies.”
