Cable loses market share as Dutch turn to IPTV

Sunday, November 23rd, 2014
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HOUTEN, The Netherlands — The Dutch are increasingly turning to IPTV over DSL and fibre networks to get their TV services, resulting in a steady decline in cable’s market share. In the third quarter of 2014, cable fell to less than 60 percent of TV subscriptions, while fibre networks became the third-largest technology for receiving TV with almost 10 percent of customers. According to Telecompaper’s latest quarterly report on the Dutch Television Market, DSL was in second place with over 14 percent of the TV market.

The total number of TV connections in the Netherlands was stable at around 7.74 million in Q3 2014, as growth in digital subscriptions offset fewer analogue subscribers. Over 88 percent of the market now uses digital TV. Cable still accounted for over half (55%) of digital TV subscribers in Q3, despite losing market share to the increasingly available IPTV services over DSL and fibre networks.

Ziggo was the largest TV provider at the end of the third quarter, both in the total TV market and the digital TV market, followed by KPN. Ziggo had over a third of digital TV subscribers, while KPN took 29 percent, UPC accounted for 16 percent and CanalDigitaal 10 percent. Once the acquisition of Ziggo by UPC is completed, the new Ziggo will thus have almost 60 percent of the digital TV market.

“The new Ziggo will face a challenge halting the steady decline in cable’s TV market share,” said Telecompaper analyst and report author Kamiel Albrecht. “We expect almost zero growth in the TV subscription market in the period to 2018. Almost all households already have a TV connection and fewer are taking subscriptions for second TVs, in favour of watching video over tablets, computers and other devices.”

Telecompaper estimates that the consumer TV services market* generated over EUR 400 million in revenues in the third quarter of 2014, slightly lower than in the previous quarter. Its ‘Dutch TV Market Q3 2014’ report also provides a detailed forecast for revenues, subscriptions and provider and technology market shares for the period through 2018.

* The reported retail revenues include revenues from basic TV subscriptions (digital/analogue), pay-TV services and video-on-demand service. These exclude revenues from installation fees and set-top box sales.

Due to continuous improvements in our calculations, the numbers in this press release cannot directly be compared with numbers from earlier press releases sent out by Telecompaper on previous studies of the Dutch television market.

Dutch TV Market Q3 2014 is a research product from Telecompaper. Price for 10 users is EUR 595.00. Single-user price for the report is EUR 395.00.