Satellite Industry Revenue Growth Slower in 2009, Report Shows
Satellite industry revenue growth slowed to about 11 percent in 2009, slightly lower than the average between 2004 and 2009, the Satellite Industry Association said in its annual state of the satellite industry report Monday. The association treated the slowdown as a major success across all satellite sectors given the large-scale economic contraction that has dragged down other industries around the world. The study was done by the Futron Corp. using independent research and surveys of SIA members and 40 other international and domestic satellite companies.
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The resilience in a down market was helped by a more widely diversified industry that has increasingly been selling end-user products in addition to infrastructure, said Futron’s Technical Director Andrea Maleter. “Satellite is now a more completely integrated part of the communications industry, on infrastructure, consumer and government sides. It is a business that is continuing to grow … and continuing to evolve,” she said.
Satellite services continued to make up the majority of satellite industry revenue in 2009, the report found. The sector made up 58 percent of the total satellite market in 2009, with $93 billion in revenue for the year, up 11 percent over the previous year. Satellite TV also increased 11 percent to $71.8 billion. Asia was the largest source of the 8 million new direct-to-home TV subscribers. HD continued to be a major driver for the satellite industry, with HD channels almost doubling over the last year, the study said. New capacity for HD in regions that aren’t well-served by the technology are expected to propel the sector in coming years, said SIA President Patricia Cooper in an interview. “We're at the beginning of this global HD deployment trend,” she said. “We can be pretty confident there will be a future pipeline for HD channel demand going forward. HD still remains primarily in its infancy. Many major markets internationally haven’t developed yet and still have to roll out the service -- and will demand satellite capacity to do so.”
Within the same sector, transponder agreement revenue increased 7.8 percent in 2009 to $11 billion, growing faster than in 2007 and 2008. Satellite broadband service accounted for about $1 billion in revenue, with U.S. service making up about 70 percent of that, the study said. Mobile satellite services revenue represented $2.2 billion revenue for the year, mostly on the back of data applications, which grew 13 percent while mobile voice revenue fell 23 percent. Subscription revenue for satellite radio providers grew 4 percent to $2.54 billion, the study said.
Satellite manufacturing was the fastest growing sector in 2009, up 29 percent to $13.5 billion, primarily due to commercially procured satellites for government missions, said the report. In general, the government needed satellites for more complex missions, requiring higher weights and more sophisticated payloads, said David Vaccaro, senior director of Futron, in an interview.
The launch industry’s revenue grew by 18 percent in 2009 to $4.5 billion on 46 commercial launches, the report found. While there were three fewer commercial launches, revenue per launch increased, it said. The government generated 55 percent of all commercially procured launch revenue, it said. The ground equipment sector experienced the biggest growth slowdown, growing by 8 percent to $49.9 billion. The same sector grew 34 percent 2007-2008. The slowed growth is possibly a reflection of the move to GPS enabled handsets and chipsets, which weren’t included in the report.