A booming demand for high definition TV has resulted in Sky nearly reaching the 10 million customer milestone.

The recent introduction of hi-def services on the Sky network has resulted in new customers almost doubling for Sky subscriptions compared to the year prior. Chief executive of the company, Jeremy Darroch, said that a total of 482,000 new subscribes has taken the total HD user base to almost 2.1 million and this rate is increasing quickly.

This figure represents a higher than expected growth for HD services of which only 310,000 subscribers were forecast. This means that now in total BSkyB has a total subscriber user base of 9.7 million.

Darroch was obviously pleased with the performance of the HD sector “The standout performance came in high definition TV with almost half a million [more] customers choosing Sky+HD”.

The uptake of HD has been successful that Sky has stated they will now only offer HD set-top boxes on the market. The company want to make HD the standard offering and are now ensuring to encourage that non-HD customers upgrade to the HD service.

Mr Darroch, who labels their HD service as “next frontier” television, admitted that the increase in new HD business was partly due to their first half marketing campaign which cost a total of £70 million. However this ensured that the Sky group increased its average revenue by 11% per user to about £492.

Further to the increased uptake in Sky HD, Darroch is confident that new 3D technology will help push the service forward to ensure continued growth. This will be backed up by new channels from the company specialising in 3D sport, movies, documentaries and arts. Darroch pointed to the recent film “Avatar” by James Cameron as evidence that people are interested in this service “Avatar has changed everybody’s view of 3D.” This point is further extenuated by the successful recent viewing of Arsenal football clubs broadcast against Manchester United which was deemed popular among viewers.

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