A booming pay Tv market in India

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April 28 – Indians are addicted to the idiot box. India's pay television industry is projected to grow at 16 percent annually to log revenues of US$11.3 billion by 2012 and emerge as a key driver of this business in Asia, says a new study by Hong Kong-based Media Partners Asia, a leading think tank on media and communications industry.

The study says the total pay TV revenues in India will grow further to top US$18.5 billion by 2017, with subscription revenues of US$12.3 billion and advertising amounting to US$6.2 billion.

"Much of the region's digital growth will be driven by China and India, though India will have a more significant impact for pay TV distributors and content suppliers," reported Sify.

In 2007, total pay TV revenues amounted to US$5.25 billion, of which subscription revenue was $3.77 billion and advertising accounted for US$1.48 billion, with a subscriber base of 81.67 million. The study also projects the subscriber base to expand to 137 million by 2012 and 163.8 million by 2017, with an annual growth of 10.9 percent for the first five years and 7.2 percent for the remaining five.

Further the study said "We expect a major ramp up from 2008 onwards with the launch of new direct-to-home services from Sun Direct, Reliance Communications and Bharti,", adding that competition, too, would intensify.