Market Share Down; Revenue Up
Completely in line with analyst firm Kagan’s predictions for the cable TV market as a whole, Comcast announced in earnings today that it lost more basic video subscribers in Q3, but increased revenues overall.
What does this mean? It means cable is feeling the competition from its telecom rivals, but also that cable operators have been very savvy about replacing one revenue stream with another. Specifically, cable is making money from new services: HDTV, VOD, DVR. Kagan predicts that residential cable revenue will increase 77% over the next ten years to $121 billion, driven by the sale of new services to an existing customer base. Kagan also predicts that residential ARPU (average revenue per user) will hit $143 per month by 2017. Throw in a growing commercial services market, and cable’s future isn’t looking too shabby.
