Asia Pacific’s pay TV boom to continue

Pay TV revenues in Asia Pacific will be $12 billion higher in 2018 ($43.9 billion total) than in 2012, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. In fact, the Digital TV Asia Pacific report estimates that pay TV revenues (subscriptions and on-demand) will grow by $2.1 billion in 2013 to $33.9 billion.

Simon Murray, report author, said: “China overtook Japan to become the most lucrative pay TV market in 2012. Pay TV revenues will more than double in five countries [Indonesia (tripling), Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam] between 2012 and 2018, but will fall in Hong Kong and South Korea.”

The Asia Pacific region is undergoing a rapid digital TV conversion that will see penetration increase from 16% in 2008 to 44% in 2012 and on to 90% in 2018 – or up by 440 million homes between 2012 and 2018. By end-2013, digital penetration will reach 53%, or 420 million homes (up by 78 million on the end-2012 figure).

Murray continued: “Despite the rapid conversion, digital TV will still have plenty of room for growth for some time to come. Only six of the 15 countries forecast in this report will have fully converted to digital by 2018. By then, Indonesia and the Philippines will have digital penetration of only 42% and 34% respectively. Indonesia will still have 29 million analog homes and India 31 million.”
Source: Digital TV Research Ltd Of the 440 million digital homes to be added between 2012 and 2018, 128 million will come from DTT. However, the number of analog terrestrial homes will fall by 204 million. Digital cable will contribute a further 187 million additional homes, with analog cable losing 141 million. Pay DTH will supply an extra 35 million and pay IPTV 71 million more. Pay IPTV subscribers will overtake pay DTH ones in 2016.

So pay TV penetration will rise from 56% in 2012 to 67% in 2018, adding 154 million subs to take the total to 587 million. China will provide 313 million pay TV households by 2018, with India supplying a further 158 million. However, pay TV penetration will be higher in South Korea (95%) and Hong Kong (96%).