| IPTV subs worldwide to surge to 155mn by 2013 |
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| Thursday, 16 July 2009 15:38 | |||
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The number of pure and hybrid IPTV subscribers worldwide more than doubled in 2008 to reach 26mn, and is predicted to surge to around 155mn by 2013, according to a new report from Infonetics Research. The report, entitled 'IPTV and Switched Digital Video Equipment, Services, and Subscribers', also indicates that IP set-top box sales will grow at an average of 14% annually between 2008 and 2013. By the end of the period, telco service providers are expected to derive about US$ 56bn worldwide from IPTV services (not including mobile IPTV services). Service providers and cable operators are described as having paused spending on IPTV and switched digital video (SDV) equipment in the first quarter of 2009, due mainly to the macroeconomic conditions and a slowdown in rollouts by AT&T of its 'U-verse TV service' and by Comcast of its switched digital video service, pushing worldwide sales down 11% sequentially to US$ 1bn. The only region to have seen growth in IPTV and SDV revenue was Central and Latin America, according to the report, however in terms of year-on-year growth, worldwide vendor revenue for all IPTV and SDV equipment segments were in positive territory, from "holding steady" (IP video encoders) to "explosive growth" (universal edge QAMs). The overall market is expected to grow at a "healthy rate" over the next four quarters as service providers roll out new IPTV networks or expand existing ones, and cable MSOs introduce switched video capabilities into their digital TV networks. “All eyes are focused on video on-demand and streaming content servers as more and more programming moves to on-demand," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and video at Infonetics Research. "VoD is rapidly becoming EoD (everything on-demand) as operators beef up their streaming server capacity to support not only HD VoD, but network and RS-DVR services, targeted advertising, and start-over services, all of which will become standard features for video providers. These changes will lead revenue for VoD and streaming content servers to triple between 2008 and 2013." Video-on-demand servers are believed to be quickly transforming from solid-state based, centralised devices connected to a master storage library, to cheaper, flash-based memory in a switched architecture, led by BigBand, Cisco, Motorola, and Verivue.
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