Sharp innovation gap seen between advanced, emerging Asia

Pay-TV providers in advanced economies in Asia are focused on improving existing product suites, while investment in emerging economies is being used to create new solutions to boost subscriber growth, according to NAGRA and MTM.

Across advanced economies in the region, 97% of pay-TV providers offer IP connected set-top boxes, compared to only 42% in emerging markets.

The latest paper from the Pay-TV Innovation Forum research program shows that there are also noticeable differences in operator provisioning of other features. 4K availability within the region varies, with 50% of providers in advanced economies offering this service, versus only 6% in emerging ones.

There is also significant variation in the availability of TV Everywhere services, with 53% of emerging providers offering it compared with 80% in the advanced economies.

These differences underscore that providers are focusing on varying and diverse innovation initiatives over the next five years which will be directly linked to their economic circumstances.

In emerging markets, service providers are expected to concentrate their efforts on delivering core valued-added propositions, including HD video and a transition to hybrid STBs.

Operators in advanced markets that already offer these services are expected to focus on developing seamless video experiences across devices, based on IP, cloud and data technologies to make content discovery as easy as possible.