on the Dutch TV market. During the quarter, digital TV subscribers grew by 0.6 percent which was enough to off-set the continued decrease of analogue-only subscribers. The main reason for the digital TV subscriber’s growth was consumers choosing IPTV via DSL or fibre with the traditional TV technology cable only growing a little. The consumer TV services generated almost EUR 410 million in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2014, slightly higher than in the previous quarter.
Almost 90 percent of the market now uses digital TV and cable is still the largest digital TV technology with over half (54%) of the subscribers in Q4, despite losing market share to the increasingly available IPTV services over DSL and fibre networks. DSL is responsible for 17 percent of the digital TV connections and fibre for almost 11 percent.
The combined market share of Ziggo and UPC, which recently merged to form a near-national cable network, amounted to almost 54 percent of the market at the end of 2014. Of the share, almost 34 percent came from the former Ziggo areas and around 20 percent from the former UPC areas. KPN is number two with a market share of almost 27 percent. The picture is the same on the digital TV market, only the shares are slightly different with KPN (29.5%) is trailing the Ziggo/UPC combination (49%) with former Ziggo subs responsible for 33 percent and former UPC subs for 16 percent.
The number of TV subscribers is expected to stay stable up until 2019 as almost all households already have a TV connection and fewer are taking subscriptions for second TVs, in favour of watching video on tablets, computers and other devices.
