Mar. 5, 2008

According to the latest Informa TV and PVR report, in less than four years from now, more than 900 million homes will have access to VOD (Video on Demand) on a global basis. Informa added that this was equivalent to a little more than 77.9 percent of the world's TV households.

Overall revenue from the services was predicted to exceed $10 billion in four years from now.

Overall, Video on Demand is like rush-hour subway service, where multiple copies of the same program run at very close intervals. Like commuters, TV viewers wait for the next available program to start. To a certain degree, this is also how many premium U.S. cable TV channels have operated for about the past twenty years.

In Europe, the U.K. was predicted to be the on-demand leader, generating about $677 million in 2012, with France and Germany in close second and third places.

Informa also predicted that North America and Europe would account for almost a combined 82.9 percent of global on-demand revenues in about three-and-a-half years from now, with North America accounting for nearly 50 percent of the world's VOD revenues.

Adam Thomas, author of the Informa report says "while true VOD operators still use a free-content model to promote high customer awareness of the technology, there are now signs that these services are successfully converting users into revenue-generators."

Thomas added "this is often at the expense of VOD services, which are either being phased out, or reduced in size."

Source: eMarketer