Sky Set-Top Box Sales Below Predictions

Digital television managed to shift 171,000 digital satellite set-top boxes through retail outlets between the launch of digital TV on 1 October to 26 December last year; 16,000 analogue satellite units were sold in the same period. These are the latest findings from research company GfK Marketing Services and combines sales from both Sky Digital and ONdigital.

This means that Sky Digital sales have been much lower than anticipated as both GfK and BSkyB projected that Sky would have 200,000 digital subscribers by the end of last year (see Newsline). ONdigital has so far refused to specify sales targets beyond ‘tens of thousands’ by the end of 1998 and ‘hundreds of thousands’ by the end of this year.

GfK’s projection that digital TV awareness is on the increase however (see Newsline) appears to have been more accurate, with awareness rising 6.7% since August to 89%, a fairly modest rise but an increase nonetheless.

GfK’s digital TV project director, Phil Lewis, says: “Despite early stock shortages, digital television was finally launched on schedule and gained considerable momentum in the period leading up to Christmas.”

Both Sky and ONdigital subscribe to GfK’s weekly tracking service which is based on point-of-sale recorded data.

GfK Marketing Services: 01494 539 183