France Leads in IPTV

Industry analyst firm Point Topic prepared the Broadband and IPTV Growth Report presented at the Broadband World Forum in Paris, which shows that broadband continued to show healthy growth in the first half of 2011. Global broadband numbers at the end of June totaled 557.8 million subscriber lines, up by over 29 million lines since the start of 2011. The second quarter outperformed the same period last year. In addition, IPTV passed a milestone: 51 million customers now subscribe to IPTV services worldwide, with France in the lead as top IPTV country.

Nine percent of the world’s broadband homes now subscribe to an IPTV service, an increase from 7.8 percent in June last year. Europe is still the leading IPTV region with strong growth in France, Romania, Russia and Belarus. The competitive and regulatory environment coupled with a relatively high broadband penetration mean that all these markets show good prospects for future growth. Asia has increased its market share by almost 5 percent in the last 12 months and shows signs of accelerating in a number of markets. Asia is likely to overtake Europe in 2012 in terms of IPTV subscribers.

France still leads the IPTV market with 11.05 million subscribers, representing over 50 percent of French broadband lines. In contrast, China’s 10.5 million subscribers are equivalent to around 7.6 percent of lines in the market. Many IPTV subscribers are in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with Hong Kong having one of the highest IPTV penetrations in the world. Growth in the remainder of the top 10 IPTV nations is healthy with all markets apart from Spain reporting significant double-digit growth in the year ending June 2011.