Indentifying this year as “a key inflection point,” market research firm NSR is further forecasting more than 785 Ultra HD channels via satellite by 2025. The information comes from the company’s “UltraHD via Satellite, 3rd Edition,” which was released this week.
By next year, almost all regions worldwide will have Ultra HD channels available, NSR says, with even developing regions seeing content by the end of the decade. The falling prices of 4K TV sets are accelerating interest and demand, and the research firm predicts that 4K TV penetration rates will rise faster than the initial introduction of HDTVs.
“Given the exponential increases we’ve seen on 4K TV shipments, introducing Ultra HD channels and packages is a key strategy to retain and grow pay TV subscriber bases in an increasingly competitive environment. Additionally, this is a vital competitive response to OTT platforms’ ever expanding online content catalogues,” Alan Crisp, NSR analyst and author of the reports, says.
Crisp maintains that while in the short term DTH, cable and IPTV platforms will offer Ultra HD for free with existing premium channel bundles, longer term Ultra HD will achieve higher revenue streams generated by increasing ARPUs and subscriber levels. NSR foresees the impact to the bottom line of pay TV platforms and satellite operators as “disproportionately large,” and says it will form a critical component of most platforms by 2025.
“Those without it will be viewed the same way SD-only platforms are viewed in the market today,” NSR states.