Three-quarters of global TV households are now digital

Three-quarters of the world’s TV households are digital

Source: Digital TV Research Ltd

Global digital penetration climbed from 40.4% of TV households at end-2010 to 74.6% by end-2015, according to the latest edition of the Digital TV World Databook. About 584 million digital TV homes were added in 138 countries between 2010 and 2015. This doubled the digital TV household total to 1,170 million.

From the 584 million digital homes added between 2010 and 2015, 156 million came from primary DTT [homes taking DTT but not subscribing to cable, satellite TV or IPTV]. Digital cable contributed a further 231 million. There were more pay IPTV additions (88 million) than pay satellite TV ones (67 million). However, there were still 398 million analog TV households (terrestrial and cable) by end-2015, although this was down from 863 million at end-2010.

From the digital TV households additions between 2010 and 2015, 381 million were in the Asia Pacific region; more than doubling its total to 608 million. China became the largest digital TV household nation in 2010, rising to 339 million digital TV homes (29% of the world’s total) by end-2015.

The number of pay TV households (analog and digital) reached 907 million by 2015, up from 716 million in 2010. Asia Pacific increased by 126 million – or two-thirds of the global additions – during this period to bring its total to 520 million.

The number of global digital pay TV subscribers doubled from 382 million in 2010 to 771 million in 2015.

China had the most pay TV subs, at 264 million by end-2015 (up by 69 million on 2010). India added a further 32 million pay TV subs.

Pay TV revenues [subscriptions and PPV revenues from movies and TV episodes] reached $206 billion in 2015, up by 19.4% from $172 billion in 2010. The US recorded pay TV revenues nearly ten times as high as second placed China.