AT&T Now Has Over 1 Million Subscribers
December 2008
AT&T said it now has over 1 million subscribers for its U-verse service. It expects to have about 17 million homes passed by the end of 2008. By the beginning of 2009, AT&T said it is looking to offer more than 100 linear HD channels. It is also looking to add a third HD stream into the home by conducting tests in its labs.
Source: MRG, Inc., December 2008 IPTV Bulletin
Worldwide Broadband Market Climbs 19%
December 2008
According to Point Topic, there are 398.4 million broadband subscribers worldwide as of the 3Q/2008. After a somewhat slow second quarter (14 million new subs), the third quarter had 15.9 million net additions. The quarterly growth rate was just 4%, however yearly growth was 19%.
Looking at specific regions, Western Europe has the largest share of worldwide broadband subscribers at 25.8%. South, East Asia has 22.7% and North America is third with 22%.
Overall quarterly growth in all regions was positive except for some slowdown in two sub-regions: Asia Pacific fell by .37% and the Middle East/Africa went down by .45%. Quarterly growth rates for North America, Western Europe and SE Asia were low (under 3% each), but that's probably because broadband penetration is already high and there's less room for broadband growth. The region with the highest quarterly growth rate was Latin America (8.3%), followed by SE Asia (7.4%) and Eastern Europe (6.9%).
In terms of annual growth, Indonesia is leading with 178% or about 384,000 net additions in the last 12 months. Rounding out the top five are India, Belarus, Greece and the Philippines.
Source: MRG, Inc., December 2008 IPTV Bulletin
Orange France Telecom Looking to Develop an Application Store
December 2008
According to media reports, Orange France Telecom is looking to develop an application store much like iTunes, for content on devices like TV, PCs and mobile phones. France Telecom held a partner meeting in Florida, U.S., in order to develop the plan, which would likely not be fully developed for another year or two.
Source: MRG, Inc., December 2008 IPTV Bulletin
VUDU Opening Up Its Platform to Outside Developers
December 2008
VUDU announced that it was opening up its platform to outside developers to help bring Web content to the TV screen. VUDU created some initial applications, like games, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube, that are currently available to all VUDU customers.
Source: MRG, Inc., December 2008 IPTV Bulletin
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