Market Trends

by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief

Singapore, June 18, 2010--This year's CommunicAsia in Singapore held earlier this month had a different feel to it. I've been attending CommunicAsia for nearly 15 years now and there was an air of optimism that was borne by real prospects in this growing market.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - June 16, 2010 - Cisco announced the results of the annual Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2009-2014, which projects that global Internet traffic will increase more than fourfold to 767 exabytes, or more than 3/4 of a Zettabyte, by 2014.　 This amount is 100 exabytes higher than the projected level in 2013, or an increase the equivalent of 10 times all the traffic traversing Internet Protocol networks in 2008. 

Singapore, June 16, 2010--Broadband subscription growth took an upswing during the first quarter of 2010, supported in part by healthy DSL growth in every region, strong fiber rollouts in Asia and aggressive IPTV service offerings. These statistics were revealed today by the Broadband Forum at a CommunicAsia press conference, in conjunction with research by industry analysts Point Topic. 

Singapore, June 7, 2010--More than 719 million pay-TV subscribers are expected to sign up in 2010 as the economic recovery continues to gain momentum, according to latest forecasts from ABI Research. Digital Home industry analyst Michael Inouye notes, "ABI Research estimates that worldwide pay-TV subscriber numbers will surpass 719 million by the end of 2010 as novel solutions such as Google TV move from trial to commercial launch."

Editor, Asia-Pacific

Manila, June 1, 2010-With almost 3.8 billion people, the Asia-Pacific accounts for over 60 percent of the world population. China and India alone has about 40 percent of the world’s total. Given the rising incomes and improving economic conditions, Asia continues to draw satellite service vendors and equipment manufacturers who are always on the lookout for new opportunities.

by Tom van der Heyden

Bangkok, June 1, 2010-Connecting the growing mobile and wireless infrastructure in Asia to the World Wide Web is by far the best potential long term market for satellite capacity in this part of the world after television broadcast driven requirements. Our data collection, research and resulting analysis shows that over the next 2 – 5 years internet driven markets will represent 25 – 35% of the South East Asian satellite broadband customer base and by the year 2020 this market will have grown to represent 80% - 90% of the customer base.  

by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief

Los Angeles, Calif., May 10, 2010--With over one hundred million households, the United States is currently the largest market in the world for broadband services. About sixty percent, or 60 million households currently access broadband services from various sources, mainly terrestrial. Satellite broadband service reach only one million households, or less than 2 percent of broadband households in the U.S. Clearly, there is a lot more room to expand satellite broadband services in the U.S. market and major operators such as Hughes and Viasat are determined to develop the market to its full potential.  

Las Vegas, NV, April 14, 2010 – Ernst & Young  released a report on the media and entertainment landscape in the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The report provides an overview of the latest indicators of market attractiveness, as well as the opportunities, challenges and critical success factors in conducting business in these four countries. 

by NSR

NSR’s annual review of the broadband satellite market shows that, after a year of uncertainty, the majority of signs indicate the sector made it through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression relatively well. Probably one of the biggest success stories of 2009 was satellite broadband access, where NSR noted that North America set a milestone by becoming the first region to top 1 million subscribers, and Western Europe will likely exceed 100,000 subscribers well before the end of 2010.

 The issue of inadequate bandwidth in the world very small aperture terminal (VSAT) market has experienced a conflicting impact: a spurt in service revenues and, simultaneously, a dip in the sales of equipment or hardware. VSAT providers, while pleased with the hike in service revenues, are wary of pricing many potential, cost-sensitive VSAT users out of the market.