U.S. IPTV market to grow to $14B by 2012

IPTV revenues will grow rapidly to $14 billion in 2012 up from $694 million in 2007, according to a forecast report by Strategy Analytics. The revenues however will be largely driven by network deployment of the two dominant carriers, Verizon and AT&T. The report is bullish about IPTV revenue growth but concedes this will largely be powered by the rollout of the two IPTV networks FiOS and U-verse.

The report finds providers have only a limited number of "levers" to pull, and should try to think holistically in terms of an overall customer experience. "ARPU is expected to remain relatively stable throughout the forecast period, and service growth will come largely from an increased number of IPTV-passed homes, and higher take-up rates," says report author Ben Piper.

The same point is made by ABI in their Global IPTV Market report which predicts the IPTV market to grow from 13 million subscribers in 2007 to over 90 million in 2013. Report author Cesar Bachelet says U.S. growth will largely be driven by the speed of the fiber roll-outs. ABI sees sharp increases in IPTV growth in Asia as regulatory and infrastructure issues are resolved and solid European growth. Bachelet said he was predicting West and Eastern Europe to grow from 7.2 million subscribers in 2007 to over 30 million subscribers by 2013. To better understand the drivers of European IPTV growth read our special feature [1].

The ABI report is in the middle of the pack in terms of global IPTV growth predictions. Most bullish is India-based RNCOS that predicts a surge in the Asian-Pacific zone will see IPTV subscribers reach 103 million in 2011. This contrasts with a report by Informa, Telecoms and Media late last year that forecast 38.4 million IPTV subscribers by 2011. At the same time, Research and Markets has predicted the global IPTV market will grow five times over the next four years to 80 million. This is consistent with a report by the MRG group in November that predicted 72.6 million subscribers by 2011.

For more:
Strategy Analytics release
[2]ABI release [3]

Related articles:
Top drivers of European IPTV growth Special Feature Report
[1]Big differences in IPTV forecasts Article [4]
Asian markets expected to drive IPTV Report [5]
Competition and convergence driving IPTV Report [6]