DTT households to double by 2018

Digital-terrestrial households worldwide will double between now and 2018, driven principally by growth in emerging markets including China, Brazil and India, according to a new report by Digital TV Research.

According to the Digital Terrestrial TV Forecasts report, DTT signals will reach 553 million homes by 2018, up from 264 million this year, of which 380 million will use DTT as their primary source of TV, up from 185 million.

Just under a third of DTT homes – or 173 million homes – will use digital-terrestrial signals on secondary TV sets by 2018, according to the report.

Western Europe will lose market share over the forecast period, down from 40% at the end of 2012 to 19% by 2018, despite the total number of homes receiving DTT signals growing by 20% over the same period to 105 million.

Asia Pacific will account for 43% of DTT homes by 2018, up from 28% today.

The report predicts that China will emerge as the number one DTT country by 2018, with 152 million homes, up from 20.6 million in 2012. Other risers in the DTT top 10 include Brazil, which will move up from the ninth largest DTT territory in 2012 to number two in 2018 with 37 million homes, and Russia, will move from number eight to number four, with 26.2 million homes.

The current leader, the US, will fall to number three, while the UK will fall from the number four slot in 2012 to number seven by 2018.

DVB-T will remain the main technology standard in 2018 with 233 million homes but the DMB-T standard backed by China will make strong headway, rising from 22 million homes today to 154 million by 2018.