Report: North American IPTV Market Declines Despite Healthy Increase in Other Regions

By Nathesh

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

A report from Infonetics Research (News - Alert) has stated that present uncertain economy is a major cause for the North American Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) markets’ decline despite a healthy increase in other regions such as EMEA, Asia Pacific, and CALA.

 

The fall in the overall market is due to slowing IPTV (News - Alert) and SDV (Switched Digital Video) subscriber additions though reports indicate continuation of investments in IPTV equipment.

 

Infonetics Research states that subscriber migrations are minimal in times of an economic crisis as they tend to stay with current providers than to switch to a completely new plan. Also, new subscribers would be on the decrease as many would wait for the crisis to be over. This tendency is prevailing in North America and Western Europe right now. But Asia, Europe and Latin America are seeing continuance of IPTV investment because video service is steadily becoming a requirement to increase revenue per user.

 

The decline in the IPTV market would be seen as a surprise by some analysts since only a couple of years ago it was reported that the IPTV market would soon become mainstream. Reports even indicated that service providers were expected to generate significant IPTV service revenue between 2005 and 2009, with its all around revenue increasing at a 169% five-year compound annual growth rate.

 

But now the estimates are that North America's share of the overall IPTV and SDV equipment markets have dropped from 47% to 38%. The huge worldwide IP set-top box market is down 10% due to the subscriber slowdown, while the promising IP video encoder market is up 8% as subscribers seek to add channels, particularly high definition (HD) channels.

 

The report adds that there is a fierce battle for IPTV subscribers among providers in France while IPTV service activation times from service providers like AT&T (News - Alert) are ranging from days to weeks, prompting IPTV operators to push harder for well-defined interoperability standards.

 

Infonetics' report tracks IPTV and SDV equipment, services, and subscribers, providing market size, vendor market share, and forecasts through 2011. Companies tracked include 2 Wire, ADB, Alcatel-Lucent, Amino, Celrun, Cisco (News - Alert) (Scientific Atlanta), Dasan Networks, Envivio, Ericsson (Tandberg), Harmonic, Microsoft, Motorola, Netgem, Nokia Siemens, OptiBase, Phillips, Sagem, Samsung (News - Alert), Sumitomo, Telsey, Thomson, Tilgin, UTStarcom, Yuxing, and others.