DirecTV Enjoys the Highest ARPU in Pay-TV Industry, Says Infonetics
Cable is taking hits from multiple competitors, according to Infonetics Research’s "Pay TV Services and Subscribers" report, which forecasts and analyzes the telco IPTV, cable video, and satellite video services markets.
“In 2008, cable video made up 59 percent of the global pay TV market, satellite video brought in 38 percent and IPTV was just a drop in the bucket," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics Research, in a statement. "Now cable operators are being challenged not only by attractive pricing and services from IPTV and satellite operators, but by all over-the-top (OTT) video services, like Netflix and Amazon On-Demand, and by connected-TV devices, which are prompting consumers to cut the cord.
"Net new cable video subscribers continue to decline in North America and EMEA, and the small increases in Asia and Central and Latin America aren’t offsetting those declines. While we don’t expect OTT to have a significant impact on pay TV subscribers because operators are responding to OTT with their own enhanced delivery offerings, we do expect cable video’s share of pay TV revenue to decline as satellite video increases – nearly catching up to cable by 2015 – while IPTV services grow to 15 percent of the market.”
The global pay TV market, including telco IPTV, cable and satellite video services, totaled $125 billion in the first half of 2011 (1H11) and is forecast by Infonetics Research to grow to $353 billion by 2015. Most of the future growth in the pay TV market will come from satellite video and telco IPTV services.
North America remains the highest-value pay TV market, benefiting from the highest average revenue per user (ARPU), followed by Asia Pacific, which benefits from a pay TV subscriber base nearly 4 times the size of that of North America.
DirecTV and Comcast are the global market leaders for pay TV service revenue and subscribers in 1H11, respectively, with DirecTV continuing to enjoy the highest ARPU in the industry and Comcast now with 22.5 million subscribers.
