Asia leads growth in the worldwide IPTV (News - Alert) subscriber base, which totaled around 92.7 million in the first quarter of the year, up 23.7 percent year-on-year. New research projects that the global IPTV subscriber market will see more than 100 million subscribers by the first half of 2014, climbing to around 128 million by the end of 2014.

According to the Taipei-based Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute, the Asia Pacific region (including East Asia and Oceania, as well as other Asian countries) had 45.6 million subscribers in total for the period, representing the largest share of the global market at 49.2 percent. A big factor for that result is rapid subscriber growth in China, where

Following Asia Pacific is Western Europe, where subscribers reached 27.3 million. However, its global share shrank to 29.4 percent, in part because of the already high IPTV penetration.

In North America, with AT&T U-verse and Verizon (News - Alert) FiOS are actively promoting IPTV services, the North American IPTV subscriber base has arrived at 11.7 million, or 12.7 percent of the global market.

In Latin America and Eastern Europe, despite telecom operators' efforts to introduce hybrid IPTV and OTT (Over the Top) services, satellite TV and broadcast TV are still mainstay. As a result, IPTV subscriptions in Latin America and Eastern Europe reached 1.2 million and 6.6 million, respectively, with their share in the worldwide market reaching 1.3 percent and 7.1 percent.

In Middle East and Africa, total subscribers only reached 0.2 million, or 0.2 percent of the global subscriptions, due to the lower degree of availability of broadband Internet connection.

Looking forward, MIC said that in Latin America and Southeast Asia, although IPTV services are only in the introduction stage, the fast deployment of domestic fiber networks in both regions is expected to boost IPTV subscribers in the near future.