Digitimes Research: Pay TV subscriber demand sees changes in 3Q13

Benson Wu, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

Pay TV subscriptions in the US reached 84.5 million in the third quarter of 2013, with cable TV users making up 47.2%, while 40.3% were direct broadcast satellite users ,and 12.5% IPTV users. Since 2011, the number of cable TV users has dropped by 2.5 million while companies such as Verizon and AT&T have seen their IPTV users increase about 13% and 21% a year, respectively, indicating that the market is not declining but rather customer demand is changing, according to Digitimes Research.

Companies such as Comcast and Time Warner meanwhile are continuing to see success in their services through service differentiation strategies rather than solely focusing on user amounts, added Digitimes Research.