Skip to main content

IPTV Study Finds Winners and Losers

IPTV is clearly an essential element for the long-term survival of a wide array of telecom industry participants, but the move to deploy IPTV as a mass-market service will benefit some market sectors at the expense of others, according to a new report released by the subscription research service "Light Reading Insider."

Network operators �- the companies that will drive the IPTV business with their capital expenditures �- will face the biggest challenge in realizing profits from IPTV, notes James Crawshaw, Contributing Analyst for Light Reading Insider and author of the report. "While the ARPU uplift promised by IPTV appears attractive, IPTV is likely to be a relatively low gross margin business for most telcos and will detract from operating profits in the medium term, until economies of scale are reached," he explains. Crawshaw cites the cost of acquiring content as the key factor that will drag down the profitability of IPTV for network operators.

Other key findings of the report include:

* Content owners and technology suppliers have the best chance of emerging as big winners as a result of widespread IPTV deployment.
* Several major vendors have already established themselves as dominant forces in the IPTV technology race.
* Network operators worldwide will spend $21 billion on IPTV-enabling technologies by 2010, attracting 65 million IPTV subscribers by that year.
* Disintermediation is a big risk factor for network operators, as content owners will establish themselves as first-source providers via their own broadband portals.

Popular posts from this blog

GenAI Smartphones Forecast to Drive Growth

The semiconductor and smartphone industry stands on the brink of a transformative era, driven by the rapid integration of Generative AI (GenAI) technology into mobile devices. According to the latest global market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), GenAI smartphone shipments are forecast to grow by 363.6 percent in 2024 alone, reaching 234.2 million units. This surge represents 19 percent of the overall smartphone market. As we look toward the future, the adoption of GenAI is anticipated to redefine mobile device user interaction. GenAI Smartphone Market Development GenAI smartphones are defined by their ability to run on-device generative AI models efficiently, thanks to a system-on-a-chip (SoC) featuring a neural processing unit (NPU) with a performance capability of 30 tera operations per second (TOPS) or more, using the int-8 data type. This technological advancement promises to enhance the mobile user experience by enabling more personalized and proactive GenAI tool f