Worldwide spending on consumer video media services is set to climb 4.2 percent to USD 314 billion in 2017, according to a report from Gartner. Pay-TV remains by far the largest spending segment and is set to account for 90 percent of the total market, some USD 282.0 billion, this year, followed by subscription video on demand (S-VoD) services with USD 18.7 billion and transactional video on demand (T-VOD) services with USD 13.6 billion. The latter two OTT-VoD sources are the fastest-growing segment in the VoD landscape and eroding pay-TV providers' share of revenue, having began outperforming traditional pay-TV sources in 2016, said the report.
In terms of regions, the emerging Asia/Pacific (20.8 percent) and Middle East and North Africa (17.4 percent) are forecast to record the highest growth in end-user spending on consumer video media services. The report adds that China Mobile has begun offering its pay-TV service free of charge to its premium subscribers for the first two years of a new contract, helping to bolster price competitiveness and put negative pressures on the average revenue per user (ARPU) of the overall pay-TV market.
