We made the point in an earlier pieces about internet advertising that the only markets where things are growing is where a new technology or service is taking market share away from previous service forms and that’s certainly the case in IPTV ‘ up this year globally by 64%.
The numbers are supplied by Point Topic and published the Broadband Forum, but do not give global increases in IPTV purely for the disastrous last quarter, however in Europe this was given and was just 10% compared to European growth for the year of 45% – and clearly everyone will breathe easier if numbers for the first quarter of 2009 show an improvement on that.
Despite what everyone says about pay TV still being on the rise, it will have stopped dead and gone backwards during the past few quarters, and there are clear trends that cable is losing out the most, satellite standing still while IPTV surges ahead.
In Europe the numbers show France as the largest IPTV market in Western Europe with over half of the 10.2 million subscribers for the region.
‘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.”
Global growth in broadband lines show a 62.6 million increase to 410.9 million lines when again growth was slower later in the year, while regionally China remains top of the tree with 83 million broadband line, with the US second on 79 million.
Regionally, over the last quarter, Latin America (7.5%), Eastern Europe (6.2%) and Middle East and Africa (4.7%) were the best percentage growth performers, although all regions continued to report growth.
In terms of technology, DSL continues to be the most popular broadband access technology, although fiber has grown twice as fast as either cable or DSL in the 12 months to Q4 2008.
‘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.’