TiVo Loses 314,000 Subscribers vs. 146,000 in Previous Quarter
Even by the standards of its continuing loss of subscribers, the last quarter was a particularly bad one for TiVo. In the quarter ending October 31, 2009, TiVo's total subscribers fell 314,000 to 2.76 million, its worst quater ever for subscriber loss, approximately the same level they had in late 2004. That's now less than 8% the estimated 38 million US DVR households.
TiVo may very well build a business licensing its intellectual property (or suing for damages over it), but its hardware selling business has been finished for quite some time. For the most recent quarter, it only sold about 500 of its own TiVo DVRs a day.
TiVo subscribers July 2001- October 2009(millions, except for Net Additions which are thousands)
| TiVo-Owned | MSOs | Cumulative | Change | |
| Jul-01 | 0.182 | 0.047 | 0.229 | |
| Oct-01 | 0.206 | 0.074 | 0.280 | 51 |
| Jan-02 | 0.246 | 0.134 | 0.380 | 100 |
| Apr-02 | 0.270 | 0.152 | 0.422 | 42 |
| Jul-02 | 0.291 | 0.173 | 0.464 | 42 |
| Oct-02 | 0.321 | 0.189 | 0.510 | 46 |
| Jan-03 | 0.396 | 0.228 | 0.624 | 114 |
| Apr-03 | 0.433 | 0.270 | 0.703 | 79 |
| Jul-03 | 0.467 | 0.433 | 0.900 | 197 |
| Oct-03 | 0.526 | 0.476 | 1.002 | 102 |
| Jan-04 | 0.656 | 0.676 | 1.332 | 330 |
| Apr-04 | 0.724 | 0.872 | 1.596 | 264 |
| Jul-04 | 0.787 | 1.097 | 1.884 | 288 |
| Oct-04 | 0.890 | 1.413 | 2.303 | 419 |
| Jan-05 | 1.141 | 1.860 | 3.001 | 698 |
| Apr-05 | 1.213 | 2.107 | 3.320 | 319 |
| Jul-05 | 1.253 | 2.321 | 3.574 | 254 |
| Oct-05 | 1.308 | 2.700 | 4.008 | 434 |
| Jan-06 | 1.491 | 2.873 | 4.364 | 356 |
| Apr-06 | 1.542 | 2.875 | 4.417 | 53 |
| Jul-06 | 1.572 | 2.846 | 4.418 | 1 |
| Oct-06 | 1.625 | 2.809 | 4.434 | 16 |
| Jan-07 | 1.726 | 2.718 | 4.444 | 10 |
| Apr-07 | 1.727 | 2.615 | 4.342 | -102 |
| Jul-07 | 1.708 | 2.489 | 4.197 | -145 |
| Oct-07 | 1.712 | 2.355 | 4.067 | -130 |
| Jan-08 | 1.745 | 2.201 | 3.946 | -121 |
| Apr-08 | 1.728 | 2.073 | 3.801 | -145 |
| Jul-08 | 1.686 | 1.937 | 3.623 | -178 |
| Oct-08 | 1.658 | 1.802 | 3.460 | -163 |
| Jan-09 | 1.654 | 1.681 | 3.335 | -125 |
| Apr-09 | 1.624 | 1.572 | 3.196 | -139 |
| Jul-09 | 1.582 | 1.468 | 3.050 | -146 |
| Oct-09 | 1.537 | 1.199 | 2.736 | -314 |
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"MSOs" refer to subscriptions sold to consumers by MSOs/Broadcasters such as DIRECTV, Cablevision Mexico, Seven (Australia), and Comcast for which TiVo expects to incur little or no acquisition costs.
They need to bring back lifetime subscriptions. I’d love to get a HD Tivo, but the price + $13 a month for “service” is more than just renting a DVR box through TimeWarner.
Soon saying “doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo” to signal the remote holder to fast forward will be even more obsolete than it is now!
They need to quit it with the stupid restrictions like not being able to burn DVDs in the TiVo HD. I still haven’t upgraded my old TiVo becase of this and may just choose some other provider. They deserve to fail.
I still love both my TiVos, but I’d also love to replace one of them with a TiVo HD. I’ve been noticing the gold star ads on TiVo Central lately have all been promoting TiVo HD and how anything else is an imposter. I guess advertising to your own customer base isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Their main problem is that not enough people understand how much better TiVo’s software is than what they can get from their cable co, and as long as you can get a DVR from your cable co essentially for free, they’re not going to be able to compete.
Best Buy in Canada started selling TiVo DVRs this year. (As far as I know, TiVo wasn’t in Canada before that.) I wonder if they’re having any success with a Canadian subscriber base.
TiVo definitely is a superior software to any cable boxes I’ve seen, but even that knowledge is not enough for me to pay for a TiVo over a much cheaper MSO provided box.
Devdog, I think the “people don’t know how much better TiVo is” is part of it, but even people who do (like Robert, and myself, but I was a ReplayTV guy) choose cableco DVRs, in my case because of feature differences. For me, having a TiVo would mean no OnDemand, and with two little kids, thats a deal breaker.
As for the subscriber loss, you’ll see it was primarily from the MSOs category. Those are nearly all DirecTV customers. While I have no data to back it up, lots have likely upgraded to an HD set and just taken the DirecTV provided HD-DVR box.
Short answer: bad price/value ratio.
I like TiVo enough that if they’d have let me transfer lifetime program guide service from one box to a TiVoHD, I’d have gotten the cable cards for TiVo and kept the Comcast STB without the DVR so as to have the best of both worlds. Cables, extra inputs on my TV and shelf space on the TV stand I can handle.
But having to buy hardware AND pay more for the program guide than the cost of the HD DVR rental with program guide, I couldn’t handle. If they had either given the hardware away (arguably something that ultimately pays off with their data services business) or not charged for the program guide or let me transfer my lifteime service, I’d probably still be on TiVo.
I started as a loyal tivo subscriber and owned 3 boxes at one time and told all my friends about them. Then they eliminated the lifetime subscription and I bailed.
So, I built a Windows based HTPC. 4 TB of HD, 6 HD Tuners, auto senses commercials so I don’t have to even fast forward, sends video to every room in the house.
I will never ever look back.
Uh… lifetime subscriptions ARE back. I guess you didn’t notice? And yeah, it may be cheaper up front to rent a DVR from your cable co but after a couple of years you’ve paid more in monthly fees than you would have if you’d just purchased a Tivo with lifetime service.
Also, with a little planning you don’t need OnDemand when you have Tivo. Just record the stuff you’re interested in & watch it “on demand” when you want. Plus there’s all the Amazon/Blockbuster/NetFlix stuff to sate your “I want it now!” appetite.
As European I’m curious about this tv guide of yours.
Doesn’t the american signal include a tv guide? Our european DVB-T/C has an imbedded tv guide, so the reciewing equipment will automatically pick up
“pickup what’s comming” even
Cable company DVRs are part of the reason for the steep decline. The other reason is that there are just more options out there. Netflix and Hulu on game consoles is part of it.
Windows Media Center is a huge leap ahead of Tivo and with hulu.com through http://tubecentric.tv you have the best of everything.
TiVo is just going to have to face the music. The world has changed. The TiVo experience is just not compelling enough by itself (even with Amazon and Netflix) to charge a monthly subscription fee.
I’m very content with Windows Media Center, Tivo has nothing that I need. It’s kinda funny how a company with total brand recognition can fall so far. Can you imagine a day when we say “google something” but we don’t actually use Google to do it?
C, you’ve got the right idea. If I had some spare change I’d go your route, but at the moment I have something that’s apparently rarer than an unlocked cell phone: a non-Tivo, non-cable company DVR. Just about no one makes them for consumers nowadays. Sure my Toshiba might be analog, but no subscriptions, I can burn content to DVD, have a 24-event timer, significant editing capabilities, etc.
Bill, as Abe pointed out, why do you need OnDemand if you have TiVo? You simply record the shows that you want to watch when they are aired. If you miss it, you download a torrent and transfer it to your TiVo via PyTiVo or TiVo Desktop. I’ve never understood OnDemand, unless there’s content there that isn’t available anywhere else. If that’s the case, I stand corrected.
Euroguy, there is a program guide channel, though I think that’s usually a cable channel so you get the right info, but what Robert is talking about is an interactive program guide which allows TiVo to find shows to record and such.
When TiVo first debuted, the amount of information available through its guide data was truly unprecedented (14 days of listings, search by title, actor, keyword, genre, etc.). But that information is now available for free on most cable co DVRs, it’s free with Windows Media Center, it’s free on the internet, etc. The only thing that really differentiates TiVo from the other DVRs anymore is its user interface. While I still maintain that it’s superior, it’s no longer worth the premium price it commands.
Even with huge hard drives, On Demand has HUGE selection and TiVo isn’t going to hold it all.
The beauty of On Demand is you don’t NEED to worry about recording anything. Why do something even slightly harder if there are easier alternatives and you don’t find the TiVo software that big of a deal versus cable company DVR?
Especially for people who have kids, there’s always a ton of content available on both the entertainment and educational fronts On Demand. I can’t imagine ever not having a DVR but I can’t imagine ever not wanting the access to the On Demand options too.
Devdog, Abe, do you folks have little kids?
Prior to having a Comcast DVR w/ OnDemand, routinely 30+% of the capacity of my ReplayTV was used up holding kids shows, and god help me if they’d seen everything in the inventory, which happened a lot even with frequent new show recording. Now, almost none of the DVR storage is kids shows, and there is *always* something new available for them in OnDemand. That’s a huge decrease in hassle level for me. Now, the only things I record for them are the 1-2 shows they like that aren’t available in OnDemand.
Another nice thing about kids shows OnDemand is they have either no commercials, substantially fewer, or just in house promos.