The Western European pay-TV market is likely to feel the impact of IPTV. Though considered a mature market, it will enjoy a reserved growth rate in the number of households subscribing to pay-TV services, according to a research report by Analysys (News - Alert) Mason.

 

Analysys Mason is an adviser in telecoms, IT and media delivering strategy advice, operations support and market intelligence to commercial and public-sector organizations in over 80 countries.

 

According to the report, the number of pay-TV households in Western Europe will increase at a CAGR of 3.2 percent from 90.6 million in 2007 to 109.2 million by the end of 2013.

 

"The adoption of IPTV (News - Alert) services will be driven by a combination of factors, including the proliferation of multi-play strategies; latent broadband growth; improving brand recognition, broadening content offerings, and the general move towards digital TV services as the analogue TV signal is switched off in Western Europe," explains the report's author, Richard Hadley.

 

"However, the growing popularity of IPTV among households will contribute to a slow down in pay-TV spend as these predominantly lower-value TV packages are increasingly bundled with telecoms services."

 

The report has divided the pay-TV household services into DTH, Analogue CATV, DCATV, IPTV, Hybrid IPTV/DTT, DTT and other broadcast technologies. The households are divided as Basic, Family and Premium.

 

The report also states that Cable Television will retain as the top pay-TV service gaining 48 percent of the Western European market in 2013. Even at the top spot it has to bear the loss of 10 percent households it had in 2007.

 

DTH will make up 29 percent of Western European pay-TV subscriptions in 2013, but will account for 54 percent of pay-TV spend, compared with 28 percent and 52 percent, respectively, in 2007 and IPTV will increase its share of the Western European pay-TV households from 6 percent to 15 percent between 2007 and 2013. However, it will account for only 8 percent of pay-TV spend in Western Europe in 2013.

 

The report has forecasts of total spend, service penetration, and ASPS (average spend per site) for Western Europe as a whole, as well as seven individual countries and one region. The seven countries are France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), Spain and United Kingdom.

 

The report is available online at http://store.analysys.com, priced at GBP1700 (approximately EUR2172) plus VAT.