IPTV market achieves 45% year on year growth – including 10% in last quarter – despite economic downturn

25 March 2009 – The Broadband Forum today announced the latest IPTV and broadband statistics, with the Western Europe, Africa and Middle East regions showing strong IPTV growth of 45 per cent throughout 2008. The report, prepared for the Forum by industry analysts Point Topic (GBS database at http://point-topic.com/home/gbs/), showed France as the largest IPTV market in the Western European region, with over half of the 10.2 million subscribers.

The IPTV figures – announced by the Broadband Forum at today’s opening day of IPTV World Forum in London – come at the same time as world broadband statistics for 2008 show a 62.6 million broadband line growth to 410.9 million lines. While growth was slower later in the year generally, several countries showed improved performance than that of the third quarter of 2008, including France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Singapore and The Philippines.

Global IPTV subscriber totals have now reached 21.7 million, which is an increase of 63 per cent on the end of 2007 figures.

IPTV subscribers per region

Region         2007 Q4      2008 Q4
Western Europe      7,045,860   10,388,000
North America      1,774,671   3,835,544
South & East Asia   1,840,000   3,615,000
Asia-Pacific      2,199,828   3,082,182
Eastern Europe      465,223      884,466
Latin America      8,991      21,495
Middle East & Africa   10,000      10,000
Global Total      13,344,573   21,836,687

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)

“During 2008, IPTV operators showed that TV over IP could be deployed on a large scale. Western Europe remains the largest single region for IPTV,” said John Bonsell, a Senior Analyst with Point Topic.  "As expected, due to the global economic situation, broadband growth slowed, however all countries experienced overall growth during the last year."

Top ten broadband countries

         2007 Q4      2008 Q4
China         66,564,400   83,366,000
USA         69,964,758   79,074,123
Japan         28,425,700   30,325,900
Germany         19,897,616   23,425,150
France         15,555,068   17,503,518
UK         15,728,900   17,392,800
South Korea      14,709,998   15,474,931
Italy         10,860,650   12,170,080
Brazil         7,477,400   9,633,300
Canada         8,658,689   9,386,846

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)

Regionally, over the last quarter, Latin America (7.55 per cent), Eastern Europe (6.22 per cent) and Middle East and Africa (4.76 per cent) were the best percentage growth performers, although all regions continued to report growth.

Region broadband view and growth

Region         2008 Q3      2008 Q4   
          Total      Total      Growth
Western Europe      102,489,320   105,699,114   3.13%
South and East Asia   90,222,776   93,496,395   3.63%
North America      86,185,061   88,460,969   2.64%
Asia-Pacific      61,940,241   63,285,165   2.17%
Latin America      24,191,462   26,018,927   7.55%
Eastern Europe      20,671,116   21,956,239   6.22%
Middle East and Africa   11,419,696   11,962,810   4.76%

Source: Data provided for the Broadband Forum by Point Topic (www.point-topic.com)

In terms of technology, DSL continues to be the most popular broadband access technology, although fibre has grown twice as fast as either cable or DSL in the 12 months to Q4 2008. This should continue, given the number of new implementations and consumer and business demand for higher speeds. Value added services such as IPTV are also proving to be strong drivers for FTTx uptake and have driven this technology through the 50 million mark worldwide.

“This report shows that despite the economic situation the world is facing, the demand for both broadband and IPTV continues to expand,” said George Dobrowski, Chairman and President of the Broadband Forum.

“The Forum continues to drive broadband innovation, and with the recent release of BroadbandSuite 3.0, which provides new IPTV management and fibre integration tools, we continue to ensure that the industry has all the tools and specifications it needs to optimise networks and to capture the full potential of broadband worldwide.”

For further information about the Broadband Forum and BroadbandSuite 3.0 mentioned here, visit www.broadband-forum.org.