Although there are several European markets that have seen promising IPTV growth, analysts believe Germany is the next country to have exploding growth through 2013, a consulting company recently announced.
"It is foreseeable that the market volume for IPTV in Germany will follow the trend of countries such as France and Italy," according to Thomas Grota, Detecon managing consultant. "So many users are convinced above all by the exclusive content, services such as video on demand, and technical features like time shift and HDTV," Grota continued. "HD capability in particular is possible only with IPTV, but not with Web TV."
Deutsche Telekom, HanseNet and Arcor are already operating IPTV services that have around 565,000 total subscribers right now -- Detecon believes there will be more than five million IPTV users in the country by 2013.
Along with France and Italy, there are several other nations, including England, interested in expanding efforts related to IPTV expansion. But for expansion to be successful, broadcasters such as Deutsche Telekom will have to focus on content production rather than simply buying and bundling content. It will be interesting to see how companies begin to try and market IPTV services to clients, with more households continuing to utilize high-speed broadband Internet access.
