The digital TV market grew by about 455 million homes between 2010 and 2014, according to Digital TV Research. The increase means that there are now more than 1 billion digital TV households across the 138 countries covered by DTVR. Penetration rose from 40.5% to 67.2%.
111 million of the new homes came from a ‘primary DTT’ background – homes taking DTT but no other TV reception method. Digital cable contributed 182 million. Pay-IPTV (66 million) came before pay-satellite (60 million).
By the end of 2014, there were still 509 million analogue TV households worldwide, down from 866 million four years earlier. Of these, 322 million were terrestrial and 187 million were cable.
| Global TV Households by Platform (Millions) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
| Analogue Terrestrial | 527.9 | 474.5 | 423.1 | 367.4 | 322.0 |
| Pay-DTT | 8.7 | 8.8 | 8.7 | 8.4 | 9.9 |
| Free DTT | 84.5 | 101.9 | 122.9 | 161.5 | 196.0 |
| Free Satellite | 123.5 | 133.8 | 145.4 | 152.0 | 158.3 |
| Pay-Satllite | 143.0 | 159.7 | 175.6 | 186.7 | 203.4 |
| Pay-IPTV | 36.0 | 52.7 | 70.5 | 85.5 | 101.6 |
| Analogue Cable | 336.0 | 317.4 | 283.1 | 239.3 | 187.0 |
| Digital Cable | 194.0 | 228.4 | 271.6 | 327.6 | 375.9 |
| Source: DTVR | |||||
287 million of the new homes were in APAC, more than doubling the region’s total (to 513 million DTV households). China became the world’s largest DTV household nation in 2010. By the end of 2014, the country had 285 million such homes, or 27% of the world’s total.
Pay-TV subscribers (analogue and digital) reached 878 million in 2014, from 718 million in 2010. Once again, the biggest rise (106 million) was in APAC, bringing the region’s total to 500 million subscribers. The second-largest region was North America, rising by 111 million – although its total fell between 2010 and 2014.
By end-2014, China had the most pay-TV customers: 254 million, an increase of 59 million. India (up 28 million), Brazil (10 million), Mexico (6 million) and Indonesia (4 million) also grew strongly. Subscribers fell in Italy, France and the USA.
Revenues from pay-TV passed $200 billion in 2014: up 14.5% from 2010. The highest revenue was generated by the cable platform ($92 billion), although these revenues are falling. IPTV is climbing, with its revenues ($19.8 billion) up $10 billion from 2010.
About half of the global pay-TV revenues came from North America. The USA’s 2014 revenues were almost 10 times higher than China, in second place. $6.1 billion was added to the USA’s total between 2010 and 2014, followed by Brazil ($3 billion) and China ($2.5 billion).
