Dutch digital TV connections grow to 6.3 million in Q3 2012

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
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HOUTEN, The Netherlands — The number of digital TV connections in the Netherlands grew by 1.6 percent during the third quarter of 2012 to 6.3 million on 30 September 2012, according to Telecompaper’s quarterly Dutch Television Subscribers report. The total includes 3.64 million cable TV subscribers who also have an analogue TV connection. Digital TV is now used by almost 82 percent of TV subscribers in the Netherlands. Total TV connections grew by 0.3 percent during the quarter to end September at 7.722 million.

Ziggo was the largest digital TV provider at the end of September 2012, despite losing 0.4 percentage points of market share during the third quarter. It was followed by KPN, UPC and CanalDigitaal. Ziggo was 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 57.7 percent in Q3, 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 Q3. 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 9 percent in 2012,” said Telecompaper analyst and report author Kamiel Albrecht. “The total TV market is expected to grow 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. UPC is the latest operator to start offering such a service, launched together with its new Horizon multimedia gateway in September 2012. This followed similar services from Ziggo, KPN and its brands Telfort and XS4ALL.

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.