As the pay-TV market in the United States continues to lose subscribers, the market in Africa has become a growth story.
According to Dataxis, Africa now counts 15.9 million pay-TV subscribers, up 18 percent over 13.4 million in the year-ago quarter.
A majority of those subscribers are on a satellite-TV platform but digital terrestrial television (DTT) is the fastest growing market segment on the continent. At the end of June 2015, DTH subscribers amounted to 12.6 million, up 17 percent annually, but DTT subscribers hit 2.2 million, up 31 percent annually.
Dataxis research also saw IPTV subs increase 24 percent from 250,000 to 310,000, while MMDS climbed 10 percent to 460,000 and cable slowly increased by 4 percent to 270,000 subscribers.
Cable TV will continue to lose ground in Africa, according to Dataxis’s projections.
The research firm forecasts 27.14 million pay-TV subs at the end of 2018, with DTH accounting for 68 percent of the total, DTT 26 percent, IPTV three percent, MMDS two percent and Cable just one percent.
