Western Europe and Asia dominate global IPTV market in Q307, according to report

January 15, 2008 – Western Europe led the global IPTV market in the third quarter of last year, followed closely by Asia, according to a new report from market research firm Dittberner.

The number of global subscribers to IPTV services increased by 12% to reach 7.6mn in the third quarter of last year, according to the report, entitled “3Q07 Global Broadband Subscriber Survey”.  The report predicts that whereas a year ago, Western Europe held 68% of the global market, Asia’s market share will increase and overtake that of Western Europe in 2008.

The report also found that France Telecom had over 1mn IPTV subscribers in the third quarter of last year, up 16%, and led the rankings of global IPTV service providers in terms of subscriber numbers.  In second place was PCCW, whose IPTV subscriber numbers increased 3% in the quarter, followed by Free with a growth of 24%.  Five Asia-based companies were in the rankings of top IPTV service providers, rated by subscriber numbers.

Hong Kong was found to have the highest IPTV penetration rate, due to its developed infrastructure with short average LOOP length, followed by France, with the US coming last in the top ten.  The report predicts that China and Korea will see their IPTV subscriber bases increase swiftly due to the high number of broadband subscribers and the high bandwidth each are capable of receiving.

The report found that Thomson is the world’s largest commercial IPTV middleware supplier, followed by UTStarcom.