16.4.13

Of DTH in India 2020....



The Indian direct-to-home (DTH) market is expected to see its annual revenue grow over three times to more than $5 billion by 2020, as mandatory cable TV digitisation would help the DTH players expand their subscriber base, a study has said. “DTH industry revenues will reach $3.9 billion by 2017 and $5.3 billion by 2020. Revenue growth will be largely driven by increasing subscriber volumes,” Hong Kong-based research firm Media Partners Asia has said in a new report on the Indian DTH market.
The Indian DTH industry is estimated to have clocked a revenue of about $1.5 billion in 2012. Media Partners Asia (MPA), an independent provider of information services focusing on media, communications and entertainment industries, further said that the active DTH subscriber base is estimated to grow from 32.4 million in 2012 to 63.8 million by 2017 and 76.6 million by 2020. MPA, however, added that the Indian DTH market faces several cost challenges moving forward.“With conflicting growth forecasts between content aggregators and DTH operators over the active subscriber base, most of the content renewals from now on will likely be based on a cost per subscriber (CPS) basis, rather than on a fixed rate. This will reduce the benefits from operating leverage that the industry previously enjoyed. Marketing and staff expenses will remain high as the larger phases of DAS (digitisation of cable signals) rollout gets underway,” it added.
India’s DTH players made a collective effort in 2012 to improve the persubscriber economics of the industry, with launch of more DTH packages and entry-level pricing. “Operators have also taken steps to keep churn levels under check by reducing trade margins and the free viewing period for new subscribers. However, gross subscriber additions remained relatively weak and growth in the active (paying) subscriber base has remained sluggish,” it said.

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