ABI Research forecasts 90mn IPTV subscribers by 2013

March 5, 2008 – A new report from ABI Research projects that there will be over 90mn worldwide subscribers to IPTV services by the end of 2013, compared to 13.5mn at the end of last year.

“The IPTV market as a whole is poised for strong growth, but clearly it will be stronger in some areas than in others” said Cesar Bachelet, Senior Analyst for ABI Research.  “ABI research anticipates particularly substantial growth in North America and most emerging markets.”

The research firm believes that IPTV growth is closely linked to large-scale fibre rollouts, as seen by Verizon and AT&T.  “Vigorous growth” is predicted for Asia as current issues such as regulation and low broadband penetration in key markets.  In Western Europe, scope for growth is perceived in large markets with currently low IPTV penetration, such as the UK and Germany.

The report goes on to say that these growing IPTV markets offer an opportunity for vendors of products such as video servers, middleware and set-top boxes.  Another opportunity is seen in the migration from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 encoding and the addition of new functionality to services, requiring new equipment and middleware.

“Operators are getting very picky when choosing their vendors,” cautions Bachelet however.  “They want one with a proven track record, a history of supporting large-scale deployments.  For telcos, the road to IPTV could still be rocky, because for most, video is a brand new, very sophisticated business.”