Day: 30 July 2009

Irish Broadband Penetration

Broadband penetration, according to the OECD stands at 65% of all households. This leaves us behind the Euro 27 Average at 67.3%. Our near neighbour penetration rate stands at over 80% and top slot is taken by Korea (shout I’d assume) at just shy of 100%.

Broadband access

ComReg (data to Q4 2012) on the other hand give us a myriad of stats. We have 1.6m active internet subscriptions. 727k of these are DSL (copper wire to the great unwashed), 306k on Cable broadband, FWS firms at 64k, “Other” which might be satellite etc at 12k and 554k for Mobile subscriptions.

The mobile subscription is really should be call 3G subscriptions. Many of the ‘mobile’ broadband subscriptions are very much ‘fixed’ to a home PC, but it’s just that the service provider is one of the mobile networks so the word mobile, while giving the hint of portability may not be the best choice of words.

Total broadband Market

You can see clearly two things. Firstly the fairly meteoric rise of mobile broadband since 2007 and secondly, the rate of increase in the market as a whole seems to have slowed over the past two years.

Broadband Type	Subs
DSL Broadband	727,377
Mobile Broadband	554,563
Cable Broadband	306,960
FWA Broadband	65,668
Other Broadband	12,077
Total Narrowband	11,437

July 30, 2009

Media Revenues from 2009 to 2013

You have been handed the Media Revenue ‘crystal ball’, courtesy of the people over at PricewaterhouseCoopers Ireland– so which horse will you back? A recent survey on the Irish Entertainment and Media Landscape makes for some particularly interesting reading as it predicts (as much a one can) the revenues streams for the various media sectors between 2009 and 2013.

Naturally some sectors fair much better than others in their predictions. They estimate that the industry as a whole will be worth $4.98 billion in 2009 rising to $5.9 billion in 2013 a growth of 2.7% per annum. This sector is delivers just under 2% of our GDP, but in terms of numbers employed in the sector as a whole its possibly disproportionate. The real growth sector in Ireland will be access to the internet which is said to grow by 12% per annum until 2013. The stark truth about that figure is that our Broadband penetration is, according to ComReg, at 28.8% in Q1 2008 and this is both fixed line and mobile access.

This rapid growth is only comes on the back of poor penetration rates over the past few years, so it really only catch-up.

Medium	Annual Growth
Internet Access	12%
Internet Ad: Wired & Mobile	10%
Video Games	7%
TV Sub. & Lic. Fees	6%
Filmed Entertainment	3%
TV Advertising	3%
Consumer Mag. Pub.	2%
Radio	2%
Cons. & Edu. Book Pub.	1%
Newspaper Pub.	1%
Out-of-Home	0%
Recorded Music	-1%

On the face if it the figures look marginally better than some predictions where it was all doom and gloom.

But ever PWC did say that whilst we will get to the predicted end-line in 2013, there will be a ‘major decline’ in 2010 and a return to growth in 2011. Below shows the market values of each sector now and projected to 2013 at current market prices. Some of the ‘next big things’ don’t seem to be taking shape at the pace originally destined for them. Some sector struggle to grow at all (in real terms):

Recorded Music, Out of Home, Educational Book Publishing and Radio and Magazine Publishing have relatively low growth rates over the four years. What’s also interesting to ponder is that within each of those sectors there has to be a fair share of wastage at those levels of growth and that only some players in those markets will survive.

July 30, 2009