In the midst of preparations for my upcoming trip to Europe, where I’ll be attending the Broadband World Forum in Paris and IBC in Amsterdam, I’m cranking out some new research as well. Below is a sneak preview of a report Strategy Analytics will be publishing in the next day or two.  In it, we’ve updated our view on the US IPTV market, and see it hitting 15.5 million subs by 2013.

IPTV: Strong Growth, Despite Global Economic Slowdown

The US is home to one of the most competitive and oldest pay television markets in the world, the US claims a cable and satellite “homes passed” rate of over 90%. For many years, cable and satellite companies enjoyed a “cozy duopoly,” characterized by high growth and high margins.  The entrance of the AT&T and Verizon, as well as other smaller Telcos,  into the television game has created new and significant competition for the traditional pay television platforms. Strategy Analytics believes that, despite recently announced deployment deceleration, IPTV will nonetheless become an important platform in the pay television landscape.

AT&T recently announced it was scaling back its U-verse deployment plans, in part due to the weak economic environment.  Given U-verse’s important place in the US IPTV landscape, and to reflect other external factors, we have modified our prior forecast, dating from 2008.  Our new base case shows IPTV growing its market share from 5% in 2009 to 13% by 2009.

Source: Strategy Analytics, Multiplay Market Dynamics

Clearly, the ultimate success or failure of IPTV will hinge on customer uptake—not as obvious or easy a task as it may sound.  To date, Telcos have done an insufficient job at effectively articulating the value of IPTV.  For customers to make a switch, they need to have a compelling reason beyond price.