The country’s leading DTH (direct-to-home) service provider, Dish TV, is planning to launch high-definition (HD) set-top boxes in June. This will enable viewers to watch HD content offered by television channels. Sun Direct is the only other DTH player to have rolled out HDTV format so far.

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HDTV is a nascent segment, but Dish TV is pinning its hopes on the expected positive movement related to sport events during the year such as World Cup cricket, Commonwealth Games and World Cup football, according to a company executive.

Replying to a question in a post-result analyst call, Dish TV managing director, Jawahar Goel, said that HDTV is a futuristic technology; however, the company is hopeful of this becoming a significant segment in two years or so.

Following the announcement of Dish TV’s fourth quarter financial results, a Morgan Stanley report said this company was likely to be amongst the biggest gainers from the “favourably evolving pay TV market in India”. The report added that Dish TV was “progressing fast to achieve a subscriber base level that can magnify margins and make it profitable by late financial year 2011, ahead of Street expectations”.

According to another analyst report by Citi group, Dish TV will benefit from its first mover advantage, superior infrastructure and good distribution.

“We believe Dish TV is now in a sweet spot with a good scale (gross subscriber base of almost 7 million), attractive content tie-ups and adequate funding (post GDR/rights),” it pointed out. Management focus has shifted from ‘growth’ to ‘profitable growth’ and subscriber acquisition cost has come down a little from the peak, the Citi report added.

Dish TV has a 33% share of India’s DTH market. In the fourth quarter of FY 2010, Dish TV added 0.44m subscribers, taking its gross to 6.9 million. As per projections, the subscriber number of Dish TV will cross 10 million by the end of 2013.