Global digital penetration reached 74.6 percent at the end of 2015, according to the latest edition of the Digital TV World Databook.
About 584 million digital TV homes were added in 138 countries between 2010 and 2015. This doubled the digital TV household total to 1.17 billion.
From the 584 million digital homes added between 2010 and 2015, 156 million came from primary DTT [homes taking DTT but not subscribing to cable, satellite TV or IPTV]. Digital cable contributed a further 231 million. There were more pay IPTV additions (88 million) than pay satellite TV ones (67 million). However, there were still 398 million analog TV households (terrestrial and cable) by end-2015, although this was down from 863 million at end-2010.
From the digital-TV-households additions between 2010 and 2015, 381 million were in the Asia-Pacific region—more than doubling its total to 608 million. China became the largest digital TV household nation in 2010, rising to 339 million digital TV homes (29 percent of the world’s total) by end-2015.
China had the most pay-TV subs, at 264 million by end-2015, up by 69 million on 2010. India added a further 32 million pay-TV subs. Pay-TV revenues (subscriptions and PPV revenues from movies and TV episodes) reached $206 billion in 2015, up by 19.4 percent from $172 billion in 2010. The U.S. recorded pay-TV revenues nearly ten times as high as second-placed China.
