Digital TV homes to hit 1.6bn

The global number of digital TV households will climb by 120 million homes this year alone, according to Digital TV Research.

The research company’s latest World Household Forecasts report predicts that the digital TV total will reach 1.6 billion in 2016.

By 2021 the figure will reach 1.7 billion, having grown 185% since 2010 and by half a billion homes since 2015, according to the report.

“Global digital TV penetration will reach 98.3% of television households by 2021, up from 40.4% at end-2010 and 74.6% at end-2015. By 2021, 98 countries will be completely digital compared with only 24 at end-2015 and two at end-2010,” according to the report.

Asia Pacific is tipped to account for almost two-thirds of the 497 million global digital TV household additions between 2015 and 2021, while Sub-Saharan Africa will more than double its base over the same period.

The number of digital TV homes in Eastern Europe will triple between 2010 and 2021 and almost double in Latin America, according to the study.

Global pay TV penetration – analogue and digital combined – reached 57.8% of TV households by end-2015, and will rise to 63.4% by end-2021, accounting for some 1.074 billion homes.

Pay TV penetration at the end of 2021 will range from 80.3% in North America, where the figure is slowly falling “as cord cutting makes a limited impact”, to 24.2% in the Middle East and North Africa, said the study.