China, India & Southeast Asia to drive future Asia Pacific TV growth

Asia’s pay TV industry remains on a growth path. New projections from Media Partners Asia (MPA) indicate that total pay TV subscribers will grow from 444 million in 2012 to 631 million by 2017 and 696 million by 2020.

After adjusting for multiple connections in a household, the MPA forecasts indicate that pay-tv penetration will climb from 51 per cent in 2012 to 68 per cent by 2020.

The projections are published in a new report called “Asia Pacific Pay-Tv & Broadband Markets”, an analysis of consumption, investment and revenue generation across pay-tv, broadband, digital TV and interactive value added services in 18 Asia Pacific markets.

China and India alone are estimated to contribute 66 per cent and 21 per cent respectively to the subscriber growth between 2012 and 2020.

Driven by digital TV (DTV) transition in China, India, Korea and Taiwan and the steady growth of DTV pay subs in Southeast Asia, MPA sees total digital subs growing from 257 million in 2012 to 539 million in 2017, and 626 million by 2020. Digital penetration of total pay-tv subs will grow from 58 per cent in 2012 to 90 per cent by 2020.

According to the report, China will be the major contributor to HD growth, followed by India, Japan, Korea, Australia, Taiwan and Malaysia.