Business Briefs
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NIGERIA has been ranked second to South Africa in Africa’s pay-TV market with 14.5 percent of the continent’s total market share. This is according to a recent study done by telecom, TV and media business market research firm, Dataxis. It notes total pay-TV subscriptions across Africa amounted to 15.9 million as of the second quarter of 2015, an increase of 18 percent over the 13.4 million recorded in the same period last year.
Dataxis tracks all pay-tv operators in all markets worldwide. Gavin Patterson, research director at Dataxis, said the company compiled subscription numbers based on publicly available information from listed operators, national regulators, government agencies and equipment vendors. Where information is not publicly available, the firm provides market analysis based on primary or secondary research of operators, national regulators, government agencies and equipment vendors.
The top five pay-TV markets account for 65.4 percent of total African pay-tv subscriptions, says Dataxis, adding these are South Africa (35.8 percent), Nigeria (14.5 percent), Angola (6.5 percent), Tanzania (4.4 percent), and Kenya (4.2 percent). About 65 percent of the 13 million homes with TV in South Africa rely exclusively on free-to-air broadcasting services.
“South Africa has the largest number of subscriptions due to a combination of factors, including population size, electricity penetration, a relatively developed broadcast (TV) industry, strong regulation, and various economic factors,” Patterson said.
He noted that the main growth drivers for pay-TV uptake in Africa are different from market to market based on a number of different factors, including terrestrial free-to-air network penetration; deregulation of the terrestrial free-to-air market; competition in the terrestrial free-to-air market; availability of electricity supply; and affordability and other economic factors. “In general, however, satellite platforms have seen the majority of net additions due to limitations of terrestrial free-to-air network penetration as well as competition in the terrestrial free-to-air market.”
According to Dataxis, direct to home, DTH, is still the dominant pay-TV platform across the region, with 12.6 million subscriptions at the end of June, an increase of 17 percent over the 10.8 million at the end of June 2014. However, it said that DTH market share fell slightly from 80 percent to 79 percent over the period, while its share of actual growth was down to 74 percent.
It added that digital terrestrial television, DTT, is the fastest growing platform – up 31 percent from 1.7 million to 2.2 million and increasing its overall market share from 13 percent in second quarter of 2014 to 14 percent in second quarter of 2015. Approximately 22 percent of all new subscriptions over the period were to DTT platforms.
The main disadvantage of DTH is fading of the signal due to rains. Heavy rains may result into outage for a few minutes in the DTH signal. Meanwhile, DTT is an implementation of digital technology to provide a greater number of channels and/or better quality of picture and sound using aerial broadcasts to a conventional antenna instead of a satellite dish or cable connection.
Dataxis research also saw IPTV subscriptions increased 24 percent from 250 000 to 310 000, with multichannel multipoint distribution services up 10 percent to 460 000 and cable seeing just 4 percent growth to 270 000. Looking ahead, Dataxis forecasts 27.14 million pay-TV subscriptions at the end of 2018, with DTH accounting for 68 percent of the total, DTT 26 percent, IPTV 3 percent, MMDS 2 percent and cable just 1 percent.
— Nov 23, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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