Dutch digital TV connections grow 2% in second quarter of 2012

HOUTEN, The Netherlands — The number of digital TV connections in the Netherlands grew by 2.0 percent during the second quarter of 2012 to 6.2 million on 30 June 2012, according to Telecompaper’s quarterly Dutch Television Subscribers report. The total includes 3.62 million cable TV subscribers who have an analogue TV connection as well. Digital TV is now used by more than 80 percent of TV subscribers in the Netherlands. Total TV connections grew by 0.3 percent during the quarter to end June at 7.696 million.

Ziggo was the largest digital TV provider at the end of June 2012, after adding 0.2 percentage points in market share over the previous 12 months. It was followed by KPN, UPC and CanalDigitaal. Ziggo is also the largest provider on the total TV market, followed by UPC, KPN and CanalDigitaal. Most consumers receive digital TV via cable networks, which still had a market share of 58.3 percent in Q2, despite losing share due to the growing adoption of IPTV via DSL or FTTH services. Terrestrial and satellite were the second and third most popular digital technologies, but both also lost market share in Q2. DSL and FTTH were able to increase their share of the digital TV market, ending the quarter as the fourth and fifth largest technologies.

“After 13 percent annual growth in 2011, we expect the number of digital TV connections to grow by another 10 percent in 2012,” said Telecompaper analyst and report author Kamiel Albrecht. “The total TV market is expected to grow almost 1 percent over the same period.”

Digital TV growth is driven by an increasing number of operators offering triple-play services, such as Scarlet and Tele2 starting to offer services via FTTH networks. Another driver is ‘second screen’ TV services, which allow digital TV subscribers to watch the TV service also on their tablets, computers or mobile phones. Ziggo, KPN and its brands Telfort and XS4ALL have launched such services, and UPC is expected to follow soon with enhancements to its iPhone and iPad apps, possibly alongside the launch of its broadband set-top box later in September 2012.

Due to continuous improvements made 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.