21 June 2007
For the first time, official figures show that there are more homes using a Freeview set top box than a Sky one with 8.4 million households now favouring Freeview for their digital TV needs.
Freeview outsold Sky by 400,000 customers, totalling 1.96 million Freeview devices (set-top-boxes plus integrated digital televisions) during the first quarter of 2007 alone. This betters the same period last year by 1.2 million and marks a record high for the digital TV provider.
It wasn't all bad news for Sky though as its figures showed an increase on last year's sales too, with its customer base growing by 32,020 during the quarter, taking its total number of subscribers to just over eight million.
Virgin Media's cable option totalled 3.4 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter and the additional 36,100 new homes saw cable's growth outperform that of subscription satellite for the first time since the third quarter of 2001.
The results, arriving this morning courtesy of telecommunications regulator Ofcom, also showed that 80.5% of Britain's viewers were now watching programmes on a digital TV.
Commenting on the figures, Ofcom's Chief Executive Ed Richards said: "More than four in five UK households are now enjoying the benefits of digital television. It's great news that we are continuing to see the market grow strongly as we approach the start of digital switchover."
© 2008 Adfero Ltd
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