• by Wayne Friedman , June 25, 2013

Global pay TV revenues [subscription fees and on-demand movies and TV episodes] will see growth of 3.2% for 2013 for almost 100 countries. A year ago, revenue levels were at $83 billion.

For the next two years there will be hikes around 2%, according to the Digital TV World Revenue Forecasts. Digital TV revenues will rise to $97 billion in 2018.

However, worldwide digital TV homes look to slow down versus its rapid growth in recent years.

The U.S. will remain the market leader -- but its global share of the total will fall from 43.5% in 2012 to 38.7% in 2018. Brazil will add the most revenues -- $3.5 billion -- over the next five years. Another rapidly growing territory, India, will grow by $2.2 billion -- climbing by 135%.

Global cable TV revenues, which peaked in 2012 at $86.9 billion, will fall to $82.6 billion in 2018.

Another report from Strategy Analytics says there will be 1 billion digital TV homes by the end of next year  -- a six-year compound annual growth rate of 10.7%. Right now cable, digital, satellite, IPTV and terrestrial households totaled 755 million at the end of 2012.

In North America, digital TV subscriptions will grow to 141 million in 2018 from 125 million in 2012.