July 3, 2012 – A new report from Digital TV Research is predicting that global digital TV penetration will climb from 48.6% at the end of 2011 to 86.7% by 2017 leading to a total of 1.323 billion digital TV homes.
The Digital TV World Household Forecasts report states that digital cable will be the most popular TV platform by end-2017, accounting for just under a third (32.4%) of the world’s TV households, with analogue cable still serving 4.1% of TV homes. Pay digital DTH penetration will be 14.4%, with FTA digital DTH accounting for 9.1%. Pay IPTV penetration will climb to 10.8%, up from only 3.7% at end-2011. About 16.7% of homes will be primary FTA DTT at end-2016, with 0.9% pay DTT. Analogue terrestrial TV will be taken by 9.2% of the world’s TV households, down from 31.8% at end-2011.
The analyst also estimates that 259 million of the 648 million digital TV homes to be added between 2011 and 2017 will come from digital cable. Furthermore there will 174 million new primary FTA DTT homes; 5 million more pay-DTT homes; an extra 114 million pay-IPTV homes; and pay-DTH and FTA DTH homes up 66 million and 31 million respectively.