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 IPTV Asia Programme (629.61 KB)  - Event Program

IPTV Asia: Managing rapid growth

The respected high-tech market research firm, In-Stat, recently predicted that the Asia-Pacific market for IP video services will grow nearly 80 per cent annually between now and 2010, resulting in a US$4.2 billion market. It has also predicted that Asia will account for half of all worldwide Telco TV subscribers by the end of 2009, from a total of 32 million.

These figures confirm that during the remainder of this decade, IPTV will become a mass-market service worldwide, with Asia continuing to lead the way  in customer acquisition. They also confirm that this is a dynamic market with great opportunities for those television providers who get their business model, service proposition and technologies right.

The IPTV Asia Forum will provide the high-level presentations, exhibition and networking opportunities that such a growth market deserves and will look in detail at how IPTV providers can fulfil their potential in a competitive marketplace.

Informa Telecoms & Media has predicted that IPTV will account for just over 35 per cent of all digital TV homes in Hong Kong by 2010, giving it similar penetration figures to cable (on 37.3 per cent when counting digital homes only). The research company also forecasts that 13 per cent of digital households in Singapore will receive their signal via DSL - making it a significantly more popular digital access platform than Digital Terrestrial TV there.

Informa is predicting that DSL will account for 9.2 per cent of digital TV homes in Australia, 6.2 per cent in New Zealand, 5.8 per cent in Taiwan, 5.7 per cent in Japan and 4.2 per cent in South Korea. When it comes to digital TV, cable will continue to dominate the region in 2010, but these projections place IPTV as a genuine contender to DTT and satellite for Asian viewers.

The growth of IPTV would almost certainly be faster but for the digitisation of cable and satellite and providers will have to fight for each new subscriber. This is especially true of the high-value early adopters who are already established Pay TV customers with cable or satellite.

Depending on the specific market, IPTV operators may have to complement multi-channel broadcast TV with extensive VOD offerings, replay-TV (network DVR) HDTV, multi-room services and in-home DVRs.

Some of these services are starting to appear on the region’s leading IPTV systems. PCCW in Hong Kong - the world’s largest IPTV provider with over 500,000 subscribers for its ‘now Broadband TV’ - is rolling out HDTV and VOD over its DSL network, while Japan’s SOFTBANK has been aiming for 5,000 hours of Japanese and Hollywood content on its DSL/FTTH Video-on-Demand service.

As with IPTV providers in Europe and the US, there must also be a commitment to provide the so-called ‘Better TV’ experience that relies on the seamless integration of video, voice and data services in the home. Enabling viewers to send text messages or use instant messenger applications with their friends from the TV set, while watching a game of soccer, is an example of how this works in practice.

IPTV providers must seek out the premium content that will drive subscription growth, yet design appealing low-cost digital TV packages if they want to take their medium to the 283 million Asia-Pacific homes that will still be watching analogue terrestrial TV in 2010 (Informa figures, 2005).

The second IPTV Asia Forum will address all these issues. This event, which will be held in Shanghai in September, will look at the many business considerations that will determine success or failure in Asia, including marketing, customer acquisition and customer resource management (CRM) issues like cross-selling TV services to existing voice/data subscribers and up-selling customers to higher value TV packages.

With 80 per cent year-on-year subscriber growth predicted, we will also be looking at how operators scale effectively - and what lessons can be learned from Europe and the US when it comes to managing and meeting customer expectations. Are there systems and technologies that can speed up customer provisioning and reduce its cost?

IPTV Asia Forum will offer the chance to hear detailed appraisals of advanced video, data and voice services for IPTV - and how these can improve competitive positioning and bottom lines. It will also assess the network and technology requirements of DSL and FTTH providers as they prepare for their battle with cable and satellite. Key topics of interest will include how DSL providers get ready for HDTV and multi-room TV.

The first IPTV Asia Forum, in Hong Kong last year, was very well received by the market. For 2006 in Shanghai, we promise to deliver another valuable information gathering and networking event.