The audience of Internet TV is on the rise year by year.
During the first half of 2016, more and more Russian viewers opt for Internet TV (IPTV). This is reported by “Vedomosti” referring to the research of the “TMT Consulting” Agency.
According to the obtained data, the number of IPTV subscribers increased by 540,000 in January – June of present year, while the satellite TV’s one by 220,000. As early as in 2015, the situation in Russia was quite different, i.e. the number of Internet TV subscribers increased by 420,000, and the satellite TV’s one by 650,000.
According to the TelecomDaily Agency, in the first half of this year, the number of pay-TV subscribers in Russia totaled 40.5 million: 6.2 million chouse IPTV, 15.9 million subscribed to satellite TV, and 18.3 million joined cable TV. As stated by the company’s analyst Elena Krylova, while the Satellite and Internet TV segments showed audience growth, the cable TV operators’ audience was slightly decreasing.
Almost 90% of subscriptions in the first six months of 2016 were gained by the top-five major Russian TV operators. The segment leader was “Tricolor TV” due to increasing the number of its subscribers by 40,000 up to 11.91 million households. It is followed by “Rostelecom” that drew 230,000 subscribers, and its audience reached the mark of 9.02 million. The top-three leaders are rounded out by “Orion Express”, the subscriber base of which increased by 38,000 users over the period and reached the mark of 2.877 million. The fourth and fifth positions were occupied by the operators MTS and “ER-Telecom”, the TV audience of which is 2.765 million and 2.730 million respectively.
As Denis Kuskov, CEO at TelecomDaily, stated to the “TASS” News Agency, the volume of pay-TV market in Russia would grow 7.5% in the present year, which would be RUB 72 billion, and it was far less last year, i.e. RUB 67 billion. He also pointes out that figures have increased up to 8.3% this year and amounted to RUB 35.2 billion. Mr. Kuskov associates it with the significant increasing in pay TV subscribers. He suggested that the pay TV subscriber base in Russia would reach the mark of 41.1-41.2 million subscribers by the end of the year.
As Mr. Kuskov assures, the crisis does not affect the pay-TV market one way or the other, since an average bill still remained within 155 rubles.
According to Denis Kuskov, in a year or two, however, such Pay-TV subscriber growth rates will not be observed. This may be due to deploying wired operators’ own networks in regional centers.
