Russia: Digital TV Turnover has Tripled

  Within the past year the Russian consumer market of equipment for digital commercial TV has tripled. Satellite systems now enjoy 90 % of the market, but in the near future this monopoly is to be substituted by digital cable broadcasting systems and then market growth will go down on its own. J’son & Partners Consulting reviewed the digital commercial TV (STB) consumer equipment market. According to their findings the sales volume in 2008 amounted to approximately 2,3 mln devices in contrast to 859 thousand for the previous year. The analysts consider the sales triple growth to be a result of a rapid increase of the number of clients for satellite commercial TV. Nowadays this segment is the most considerable in Russia. Moreover, 90 % of the equipment sold within the last year has been satellite equipment. Sales of equipment for the cable TV-systems and IPTV systems were equal to 7% and 3 % of total amount respectively.

  In summary of the data collected by the research company the following top five equipment vendors were identified: Digi Raum Electronics, General Satellite, Humax, Amino and Topfield (in descending order of market share). The market leader has left competitors considerably behind – DRE’s sales of receivers amounted to 67% of all equipment sold. Nowadays the five major manufacturers share more than 90 % of all the market sales, which is a very high concentration. It is expected to go down while the percentage of the other producers could reach 30%. According to the results of the research carried out by J'son & Partners, Russian producers hold only 18% of the market, though in connection with the state’s planned on switch to digital format TV broadcasting their quota is likely to grow.

  It will be recalled that the Ministry of Finance approved the draft of the Federal Target Program, designed by the Ministry of Communications on Digital TV development.

  At present the Program Draft is awaiting Government approval. The Program budget amounts to 127 milliard roubles and calls for a switch to digital TV broadcasting by 2015 all over Russia.

  For the last two years sales of digital TV equipment has grown 6 times over though it is unlikely to hold to this rate of growth. According to an estimate by J’son & Partners, the Russian market of commercial digital TV equipment will slow down and achieve 1,7 mln devices volume by 2012. The leading positions of satellite systems will be taken by equipment for digital cable TV which will keep about 50% of the market. The research states that satellite systems require considerable one-time expenditures on equipment and connection to networking in contrast to the cable equipment which is more affordable for customers.