Trial n Tribulation of iptv

The worldwide number of IPTV subscribers will reach 103 million by 2011, according to a study by RNCOS, a research firm which expects the Asia-Pacific region to lead a global surge in internet television over the next few years.

Europe is currently the world’s biggest IPTV market with 1.9 million subscribers, the report says, and both Europe and the Americas will experience steady growth over the next three years. But both of these regions will be surpassed by Asia-Pacific in 2011, RNCOS predicts, as broadband services become increasingly available in rural areas of China and India.

One major challenge for IPTV providers, RNCOS says, will be procuring enough quality, regional content to compete with cable and satellite providers in these developing markets.

RNCOS’s outlook for IPTV is far more ambitious than that of most other research groups. Informa Telecoms & Media, for instance, recently made a far more modest prediction that there would be 38.4 million IPTV subscribers globally by 2012.