India’s DTH market leader Dish TV yesterday announced subscribers up 640,000 to 7.5 million for the June quarter, maintaining its dominance of the sector’s 23 million subscriber market.

Dish outranks competitors Tata Sky, Reliance Big TV, Sun Direct, Airtel Digital TV and Videocon d2h. The platform’s subscriber growth was 46% up on the previous quarter, when Dish added just 437,000 subscribers. Rise in additions was partially down to the FIFA World Cup, the company said.

Dish TV chairman Subhash Chandra said: “The [pan-India DTH] category recorded a phenomenal 2.5 million subscriber additions in the first quarter of the current fiscal, moving closer to becoming the largest DTH market in the world in terms of subscribers. Dish TV maintained its leadership position while garnering an all time high incremental market share of 25 per cent.”

Average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) is higher, although only just, up to Rs139 from the quarter, from the previous quarter’s Rs138. The company said that while “any spike in activations may exert a temporary pressure on the overall ARPU”, the higher subscriber numbers meant “significantly” reduced costs.

“Growth in subscriber numbers triggered operating leverage thus significantly reducing content cost as a percentage of revenues to a new low of 40 per cent,” said Jawahar Goel, Managing Director of Dish TV.

Expenditure for the quarter, at Rs2.72 billion, was much lower than the Rs3.01 billion the company spent in the same quarter the previous year.

Subscriber acquisition costs continue to fall, down from the previous quarter’s Rs2383 per new sub, to Rs2147.

Revenues grew 23% on the same period the previous year, to Rs3.11 billion, also up on the previous (March) quarter, when revenues stood at Rs3.04 billion.

Losses fell to Rs632 million, down on the corresponding period’s Rs692 million but up from the previous quarter’s Rs598 million.

Source: RapidTVNews