Irdeto Leads Rapid Growth of India's Pay TV Market

Sun Direct, utilizing Irdeto’s Conditional Access solution, adds new subscribers faster than others in the market

Irdeto, the global expert in content and business model protection solutions and services, announced that its conditional access system enabled Sun Direct to chalk up the largest growth among India’s top five Direct-to-Home Pay-TV operators – adding a huge total of 3.1 million new subscribers within the past year – a remarkable achievement for the newest DTH company in India launched less than two years ago.

Chennai-based Sun Direct, part of the Sun TV Group, has been using Irdeto’s world leading conditional access system to manage content and secure revenues for its DTH satellite television service since its launch in December 2007. According to the Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA) of India, Sun Direct accounted for 34 percent of the country’s deployment of new set-top box devices during the financial year from April 08 to March 09, against a total of 9.14 million devices deployed by the top five DTH operators in India.  “Sun Direct’s subscriber base has reached 3.8 million by July this year,” stated Tony D’Silva, COO, Sun Direct. “We have been able to successfully manage the speed and scale of our rapid growth by relying on Irdeto’s solution to enable new revenue streams to be developed and to secure our new offerings and applications.” “We look forward to expanding our partnership with Irdeto as we continue our aggressive growth plans. Sun Direct expects to expand its customer base to 10 million by 2011.”

“Irdeto’s tremendous growth in the Asia Pacific region over the past year is enhanced by our partnerships with top-tier market leaders such as Sun TV and Sun Direct. We are delighted that our strategy to provide innovative solutions that meet the demands of key customers focused on building the base and delivering services and applications to their consumers has yielded excellent outcomes.  We congratulate Sun Direct for its latest recognition by CEAMA as India’s fastest-growing DTH player,” said Graham Kill, CEO of Irdeto.

The achievement in India marks yet another milestone in Irdeto’s tremendous growth in the Asia Pacific region and comes hot on the heels of In-Stat’s ranking of Irdeto as the top international provider of conditional access in China’s massive pay-TV market. In South East Asia, Irdeto is also positioned as the leader in CA with 64 per cent market share according to Media Partners Asia.

About Sun Direct
Sun Direct, India’s newest DTH company, is a 80:20 joint venture between the Maran family and the Astro Group of Malaysia. Sun Direct is the first to adopt the advanced MPEG4 technology offering better compression and signal quality and recently also became the first to offer HDTV content. For more information, please visit www.sundirect.in.

About CEAMA
CEAMA (Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association) is the industry association of the consumer electronics manufacturers in India and comprises over 120 members including LG, Philips, Samsung, Onida, Videocon, Panasonic, BPL, Thomson and many other Indian and multinational companies. The association makes important representations to the Indian government on various policy-making exercises on behalf of the industry.

About Irdeto
Irdeto empowers companies to protect and monetize their digital assets and maximize return on content with innovative and reliable software technologies, content management and distribution solutions and end-to-end solutions and services. The company’s products include conditional access, digital rights management, business support systems and set-top box software solutions. Through group company Cloakware, it provides software and datacenter security solutions, More than 500 customers worldwide trust Irdeto to secure and enable the delivery of their valuable content across digital broadcast, IP, mobile, enterprise and government networks. Irdeto solutions currently enable simple to advanced business models on more than one billion devices and applications.

Founded in 1969, Irdeto employs over 900 people in 25 offices across the globe, including the dual corporate headquarters in Amsterdam and Beijing. The company is a subsidiary of multinational media group Naspers (JSE: NPN), which includes a wide range of pay TV, Internet, instant-messaging, technology and publishing businesses. For more information, please visit www.irdeto.com.