India’s DTH players benefit from digital switch
April 16, 2013
By Chris Forrester
A report from Singapore’s Media Partners Asia (MPA) states that India’s seven giant DTH operators will benefit from the nation’s switch from analogue to digital TV. MPA’s report suggests that revenues for DTH operators can be expected to treble to over $5 billion by 2020 as the terrestrial cable TV digitisation schemes would help the DTH players expand their own subscriber bases.
MPA says that DTH industry’s revenues will expand to $3.9 billion by 2017 and $5.3 billion by 2020 on the back of this growth in subscriber numbers and ARPU expansion. MPA says that the India’s DTH players saw revenues of about $1.5 billion last year.
MPA adds that DTH subscribers will grow from 32.4 million in 2012 to 63.8 million by 2017 and 76.6 million by 2020. The figure for 2011 stood at 28.7 million.
However, the MPA report says that last year’s net increase in 2012 over 2011 was a mere 3.7 million which “is alarming” it states.
MPA listed the leading DTH players. Zee Group’s Dish TV continues to lead with a market share of 27 per cent in terms of gross additions, while Videocon’s d2h leads in terms of incremental additions in 2012. Tata Sky and Airtel Digital TV have 19 and 18 per cent market share, respectively. These four players together accounted for 88 per cent of total gross additions last year, says MPA.