The development of the IPTV industry in China looks bright. The segment trend for China last year included the growing cooperation among service providers and increasing technology innovations in the segment—factors which can drive growth for IPTV in the country.

In 2006, the number of IPTV users in China hit 550,000 and this figure continues to expand, reported CCID Consulting. IPTV subscribers are increasing in Hangzhou, Harbin and Shanghai. Meanwhile, IPTV has entered commercial use in Fuzhou, Heihe, Mudanjiang and Changchun. In Hangzhou, Shanghai and Harbin, various business models were developed for IPTV.

Also for the past year, significant development in the country's IPTV turf also occurred, including the issuance of licenses to companies SMG, CCTV International, Southern Media Corp. and CRI. The number of pilot cities for network building has been also rising. Branches of China Telecom and China Netcom carried out equipment tests, invited bids for network building and engaged in business cooperation negotiations.

Cooperation between content integrators, fixed network operators and network equipment suppliers temporarily put aside the dispute between the radio and TV community and telecom community arising from conflicting interest for the service. The three institutions have different definitions for IPTV, while local radio and TV institutions generally adopt a hostile attitude towards the technology.

Still at its nascent stage, IPTV in China has still a long way to go in terms of unifying technical standards for coding and decoding, networking and transmission. Moreover, the country has few contents and applications suitable for IPTV services.

On the consumer side, cognition remains relatively low. Moreover, the consumers are put under pressure to change their TV habits. IPTV deployments around the country have not reached the intended scale of adoption in the localities but this problem can be eased in the future.

Source:佚名