IPTV enjoyed a “banner year” last year, adding more than 10 million subscribers, mostly in emerging markets, research firms say.
Total broadband takeup also grew strongly, registering another 58 million lines to take the global total to 466.95 million, Point Topic said.
The research firm said IPTV subscriptions grew 47%, or 10.8 million subs – compared with 9.8 million in 2008 - to 33 million. Another research house, Informa, recorded 10.3 million new IPTV subs in 2009, bringing total subscriptions to 29.7 million.
The bulk of this growth came from emerging markets and where there is little competition from other multichannel TV services, Informa said. IPTV accounted for just 5% of the multichannel TV market by end 2009.
The firm predicts the market is poised for growth, as cable, satellite, and terrestrial TV firms increasingly embrace the underlying IPTV technology, which is already available in 50 countries.
China, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong were all in the top ten IPTV markets. Point Topic chief analyst Oliver Johnson said that with the freeing of regulatory hurdles in Asia would further stimulate growth.
“With South Korea looking strong and China building on its acceleration in the latter stages of 2009 the region could easily dominate IPTV growth in 2010," he said.
Asian carriers already account for 39% of global broadband subscriptions, adding 29.2 million customers last year.
China remains the world’s biggest broadband market by customer numbers, passing the 100 million milestone in the fourth quarter.
Point Topic said the fastest growing major broadband countries last year were all in Asia: the Philippines, which grew at more than 60%, India (40+%), Indonesia and Vietnam.
Broadband by the numbers
Broadband
2008Q4 Broadband
2009Q4 yearly
growth market
sharenet adds 09
Asia
153,905,582
183,090,647
18.96%
39.21%
29,185,065
Europe
129,145,899
142,931,560
10.67%
30.61%
13,785,661
Americas
113,500,830
127,177,224
12.05%
27.24%
13,676,394
Middle
East/Africa 12,269,412
13,718,675
11.81%
2.94%
1,449,263
Total
408,821,723
466,918,106
14.21%
100.00%
Source: Point Topic
