Advanced Television

Dutch digital over 90%

September 7, 2016

Digital television accounts for 90 percent of all TV connections in the Netherlands at the end of the second quarter of 2016, according to Telecompaper’s latest quarterly report on the Dutch television market. Despite growing digital penetration, there were fewer TV connections overall, with a quarterly loss of 3,000 for slightly more than 7.8 million connections in total at the end of June. Digital TV grew by 0.2 percent during the quarter, which was not enough to offset the quarterly drop of 2.5 percent in analogue TV connections.

KPN continued to grow its share of the Dutch TV market, at the expense of cable operator Ziggo. KPN added 0.3 percentage points in Q2 2016 to take 29.6 percent of subscribers, while Ziggo lost 0.3 percent points for a share of 51.4 percent. KPN’s growth is mainly driven by IPTV, via either fibre or DSL, which grew by 1.7 percent to 1.96 million customers. KPN’s total customer base (including Digitenne and analogue TV via fibre from former Lijbrandt customers) grew by 1.3 percent during the quarter to 2.3 million. On the digital TV market, KPN won 0.3 percentage points of market share in the quarter to reach 32.6 percent of subscribers.

Despite losing customers in Q2, Ziggo is still by far the market leader, with more than 4 million TV subscribers at the end of June 2016. Its digital TV subscriber base fell to 3.3 million, good for 46.8 percent of the digital TV market.

KPN and Ziggo will have fewer customers to compete for in the future, according to the report. In the period to 2020 it is expected that the TV market will contract by an average 0.6 percent per year.
Almost all households already have a TV connection and fewer are taking subscriptions for second TVs, in favour of watching video on tablets, computers and other devices. At the same time so-called ‘cord-cutters’ and ‘cord-nevers’ are abandoning traditional TV subscriptions altogether in favour of the growing number of online video services on the market.

Telecompaper estimates that the TV services market generated €456 million in revenues in the second quarter of 2016, growing by 0.2 percent during the quarter. In the five years to 2020, TV revenues are expected to show an average annual decrease of 0.4 percent to around €1.75 billion.

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