The Indian Direct-to-Home (DTH) active subscriber base dipped QoQ (Quarter over Quarter) in the September 2023 quarter. The total active DTH subscriber base stood at 64.18 million during the Sep 2023 quarter. In the previous quarter, the figure was 65.50 million and a year back in 2022 during the same September quarter, the figures were 65.58 million.
There hasn't been much change over the year as the subscriber base grew by almost a million in the Dec 2022 quarter and then started falling. For over a year, the number has stayed around the 64-65 million mark, which isn't a very promising sign for the sector.
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Who Leads in the DTH Industry During Sep 2023 Quarter
There were four DTH players in the Sept 2023 quarter - Dish TV India, Bharti Telemedia, Sun Direct TV, and Tata Play. The subscriber share market that each of these companies had during the quarter was 19.02% (Sun Direct TV), 21.54% (Dish TV India), 27.01% (Bharti Telemedia), and 32.34% (Tata Play).
At this stage, as more consumers are shifting away from linear TV offerings, the DTH players need to figure out how to retain existing subscribers and add new ones through innovative services. Almost every DTH player has introduced their own OTT bundled offerings for their consumers to keep them interested and latched to their ecosystem.
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Bharti Airtel is driving its DTH adds through the Airtel Black service, which bundles multiple services into a single bill. Airtel said that it added 388k users under its DTH service. Airtel mentioned that this was the highest adds by the company in a single quarter.
Tata Play has been the leading player in the industry for quite some time now and it doesn't look like its market share will be surpassed by Airtel any time soon. DTH customers don't often switch connections and opt for other service providers like mobile users do.
