The global video on demand market has been forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.8% over the period to 2015.

Video on Demand (VOD) or Audio and Video on Demand (AVOD) are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video content on demand. IPTV technology is often used to bring video on demand to televisions and personal computers.

Growth within the video on demand market looks set to be fuelled by lucrative subscription offers along with price discounts.

Furthermore, the industry has also been witnessing an addition to the variety of old and new video on demand contents. However, limitation in availability of contents for users could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

Demand for IPTV and broadband-based video is accelerating worldwide, and Asia Pacific and European markets are leading in terms of the overall IPTV subscribers. The SVOD market worldwide is turning out to be a very profitable proposition and operators are increasingly focusing on these upcoming markets of APAC to corner growth.

Key players dominating the global video on demand market include DirecTV Inc., Netflix Inc., Comcast Corp., Lovefilm, Dish Network Corp, Hulu.com, Verizon FIOS, Apple Inc., Google Inc., and Blinkbox.

Netflix now tops iTunes in terms of revenue and market share in the video on demand industry. Overall, Apple’s market share of online movie dollars shrunk from 60.8% in 2010 to just 32.3% in 2011.

Netflix grew to its dominant position from owning less than 1% of the market at the start of the same period, as the explosion of the subscription video on demand sector more than doubled the size of the overall online movie business to around $992 million.

Driven by Netflix, subscription streaming grew 10,000% in 2011, from $4.3 million in 2010 to $454 million.

SBWire (http://s.tt/1y6zp)