The number of US digital television households looks set to rise to 70.3 million in 2007, up 60% on 2003’s total of 44.2 million, an increase of 21.6 million homes, predicts eMarketer.
The US forecast specialist has estimated that, by 2007, there will be 38.7 million cable subscribers and 30 million satellite subscribers, with just 2.5 million households making terrestrial or other TV connections.
This US prediction echoes the forecast made by Informa Media Group in September last year, that in the next ten years, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Norway and the US will have full digital penetration, with the UK, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan switching over in 2015, followed by the rest of the world from 2016 and onwards (see Full Digital TV Penetration Expected To Begin In 2014).
eMarketer also predicts that the number of video-on-demand(VOD) enabled households in the US will rise significantly, increasing from 12.4 million households in 2003 to 29.8 million in 2007.
However, VOD has experienced a slow start, with less than 10% of cable TV households regularly using the service in early 2004.
Ben Macklin, eMarketer senior analyst says: “VOD has not turned out to be the cash cow cable operators were hoping for, while VOD has become widely available across the cable footprint in 2004, satellite TV operators do not have the bandwidth to offer on-demand services.”
He added: “Cable operators are providing increasing amounts of VOD content for free, indicating, perhaps, that the future of VOD will primarily be a service to reduce churn rather than a significant revenue generator in the short term.”
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