Asia overtook Europe in the first three months of 2017 to become the world's largest IPTV market by subscribers, it emerged on Wednesday.

 

New figures collated by Point Topic and published by the Broadband Forum revealed that the total IPTV user base reached 65.6 million worldwide, compared to 48.2 million a year ago. The biggest single market, China, overtook France in the fourth quarter of 2011.

 

Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson said the growth is not coming from the traditional broadcast IPTV sector, but rather over-the-top (OTT) content providers.

 

"Broadcast IPTV's market share is diminishing rapidly," he claimed, particularly in the U.S., which has coined the phrase 'cutting the cord' to describe users who end long-running, 

often expensive relationships with big cable TV providers and opt instead for content delivered by the likes of Netflix

 

Asia once again accounts for the lion's share of connections, growing by 15.19% over the last 12 months to reach 262 million. The five Asian markets that make the world's top 20 in terms of broadband connections together serve 239 million subscribers, more than a third of the global total.