Direct Broadcast Satellite’s share of the multichannel TV market is approaching a steady state of 29 percent, according to a new report from Kagan Research.
The report, “The State of DBS (8th Edition)” also forecasts that new telco video delivery will drive multichannel market penetration further, expanding the market. The report foresees telco offerings will diminish cable’s share to 61 percent, while increasing multichannel homes by nearly 20 million.
The report sees continued subscriber growth from DBS in the near term, but forecasts that to wane as local-into-local and HD local penetration matures. In 10 years, Kagan projects net new DBS subscribers will grow more than 6 million to more than 33.5 million by 2015.
Other findings include:
- In 2005, subscriber additions to DBS declined 29 percent from the previous year. The beginning of 2006 saw the trend continue with new subscriber additions down 50 percent year over year for the first quarter at DIRECTV and 31 percent at EchoStar. All new additions for 2006 are forecast to hit 1.8 million, 22 percent lower than last year’s level.
- The multichannel market has grown throughout the past decade by 38 percent from 68 million at the end of 1995 to 93.8 million at the end of last year — before accounting for cable and DBS duplicates.
- Cable market share has dropped more than 20 points throughout the past 10 years as DBS has added about 25 million subscribers.
- The capacity of DBS is growing with more satellites coming on line; cable is nearing its capacity; and telcos have only 20Mb/s to 25Mb/s for video data and phone, which limits HDTV to one stream.
For more information, visit: www.kagan.com/DBS06.
