For the past 6 weeks, I have been blogging about the mobile services segment of telcos. It is time to move on to the next segment -- Pay TV. I will analyse Pay TV using Starhub's results, as Singtel has more business segments and operates in many countries. The figure below shows the no. of Pay TV subscriptions in FY2015 and FY2016. Starhub is kind enough to disclose its market penetration rate in its financial results, which allows me to work out the total size of the Pay TV market in Singapore.

Fig. 1: Pay TV Subscriptions

As shown in the figure above, Starhub's Pay TV subscriptions has been on a gradual decline, dropping by 8.6% from 1Q2015 to 4Q2016. In contrast, the overall market for Pay TV has grown significantly by 20.5% over the same period. In particular, the growth picked up speed in 1Q2016. What happened ......