55% of homes in the world already receive digital television

In the developed world, it is estimated that 81 percent of all TV households now receive a digital signal.

The International Telecommunication Union (OUT) has carried out an analysis that highlights the massive shift from analogue technology to digital television, with more than 55 percent of TV households receiving digital signals compared to only 30 percent in 2008.

In its 2013 Annual Report for Measuring the Information Society, in the developed world, it is estimated that 81 percent of all households with a TV now receive a digital signal. But digital conversion is also proceeding apace in the developing world, where the number of households receiving digital television almost tripled in the four-year period from 2008 to the end of 2012, reaching 42 percent.

The number of pay TV subscribers worldwide increased by 32 percent between 2008 and 2012, surpassing free TV in 2011. At the end of 2012, there were a total of 728 million pay TV subscriptions, meaning that 53 percent of all television households had a pay TV subscription.

The new report notes that traditional cable and satellite television platforms face increasing competition from IPTV service providers and DTT terrestrial television.

At the same time, the delivery of television over the Internet is becoming increasingly popular, especially through OTT services, with audiovisual content providers such as YouTube, Netflix and PPLive already standing out in China.

The technology with the greatest relative growth was IPTV, with total subscriptions increasing more than four-fold in the four-year period. In absolute terms, however, IPTV still represents a marginal figure of the total number of households with TV (5% in 2012).

Globally, ITU figures estimate 1.4 billion households with at least one TV set at the end of 2012. In the developing world as a whole, 72 percent of households had a television, compared to 98 percent household penetration in developed countries. In Africa, less than a third of households had a television at the end of 2012.

The ITU Measuring the Information Society report, released every year, is the world's most comprehensive snapshot of global ICT trends. Includes the ITU ICT for Development Index (IDI), a unique global index that ranks 157 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills. The IDI is widely recognized by government, UN agencies and industry as the most accurate measure of overall national ICT development.
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