KPN grows TV market share in the Netherlands

KPN grows TV market share to almost 29%, Ziggo still dominates with 52%

HOUTEN, The Netherlands — KPN continues to grow its share of the Dutch TV market, at the expense of cable operator Ziggo. KPN added 2.3 percentage points of market share in 2015 to take 28.7 percent of subscribers, while Ziggo lost 2.4 percent points for a share of 52.2 percent, according to Telecompaper’s latest quarterly report on the Dutch Television Market.

“A year since its merger with UPC, Ziggo has been unable to halt the steady decline in cable’s share,” said Telecompaper analyst and report author Kamiel Albrecht. “The new Ziggo Sport channel, launched exclusively for Ziggo TV subscribers, may be helpful for customer retention but is unlikely to be enough to return the company to growth.”

KPN is benefitting from strong take-up of FTTH services with TV, as well as success with its IPTV over DSL service, which more than offset its losses on the digital terrestrial market. The company ended 2015 with over 2.2 million TV subscribers, including nearly 1.9 million over IPTV. On the digital TV market, KPN won 0.5 percentage points of market share in the quarter to reach 31.5 percent of subscribers.

Despite losing customers in Q4, Ziggo is still by far the market leader, with almost 4.1 million TV subscribers at the end of 2015. Its digital TV subscriber base fell for a fourth consecutive quarter to 3.3 million, good for 47.5 percent of the digital TV market.

In total, the Dutch TV market lost 6,000 subscriptions during the quarter to end 2015 at 7.835 million, of which more than 89 percent were using digital TV services. Digital TV connections grew by 0.5 percent during the quarter, while analogue-only subscribers fell by 4.8 percent compared to September.

KPN and Ziggo will have increasingly fewer customers to compete for in future, as Telecompaper expects the number of TV subscriptions to continue to fall. In the five years to 2020, the total TV market is expected to show an average annual decrease of 0.6 percent. Almost all households already have a TV connection and fewer are taking subscriptions for second TVs, in favour of watching video on tablets, computers and other devices. At the same time so-called ‘cord-cutters’ and ‘cord-nevers’ are abandoning traditional TV subscriptions altogether in favour of the growing number of online video services on the market.

Telecompaper estimates that the TV services market* generated EUR 452 million in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2015, growing by 1.1 percent during the quarter. For the full year 2015, the revenues amounted to EUR 1.797 billion, up by 2.9 percent compared with 2014. In the five years to 2020, TV revenues are expected to show an average annual increase of 1.1 percent to around EUR 1.9 billion.

* The reported retail revenues are based on revenues from mass market consumer and SOHO subscriptions. The total includes revenues from basic TV subscriptions (digital/analogue), pay-TV services and video-on-demand services and excludes revenues from installation fees and set-top box sales.

Telecompaper’s ‘Dutch TV Market 2015 Q4’ report provides detailed figures for Q4 2015 and five-year forecasts for subscriptions, revenues, and provider and technology market shares. Price for 10 users is EUR 795.00. Single-user price for the report is EUR 495.00.