MUMBAI: Hong Kong has sealed its place as the leading IPTV market in the Asia Pacific region with just over 51.1 per cent of homes receiving IPTV services at end-June this year, according to latest figures from Informa Telecoms and Media.
Hong Kong‘s strong progress in the IPTV market has been fuelled by aggressive marketing from local IPTV market leader PCCW as well as the widespread availability of high-speed broadband networks that can deploy quality IPTV services.
Hong Kong‘s nearest competitor in terms of IPTV market penetration is regional rival Singapore where SingTel is rapidly increasing its subscriber base, reaching 17.5 per cent of homes by 2Q10, up from just 8.3 per cent at 2Q09.
With promising IPTV subscriber growth also taking place in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, Asia Pacific has emerged as the second largest IPTV market in the world holding 33.3 per cent of total global IPTV subs at 2Q10, behind Western Europe which has a market share of 42.5 per cent.
Informa Telecoms and Media senior analyst Tony Brown said, "PCCW has led the way in Asia‘s IPTV market and is regarded as the Flagship IPTV operator in the region. Even after losing the English Premier League (EPL) football rights to Hong Kong Cable TV they have demonstrated an innovative approach to programming that other operators in the region could learn a lot from.
"The arrival of Google TV is a potentially very disruptive development for both IPTV and regular pay TV operators. Telecom operators who have invested heavily in their high-speed broadband networks and IPTV content platforms are obviously very concerned about the impact that Google is going to have on the market.
"China is already the leading IPTV market in the region solely in terms of subscriber numbers but IPTV household penetration remains miniscule. However, with all three mainland telcos investing heavily in broadband networks and the government‘s focus on the Three Network Convergence policy we are likely to see significant growth in the Chinese IPTV market."
