Digital TV reception will rise to 29% of TV homes in the Asia Pacific region by 2012 – up from just 6% in 2006. And the number of digital TV homes in Asia, now estimated at 36.4 million, is predicted to reach 180.8 million by 2012. Latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media shows China will overtake Japan as the biggest digital market this year and will account for 43.3% of the region’s digital universe in 2012. But subscriber apathy toward upgrading from analogue to digital is still slowing the pace of growth, according to the report’s author Adam Thomas. “Although reasonable growth is anticipated over the next five years, less than a third of the region’s TV homes are expected to receive digital signals by 2012. In the cable sector in particular we are seeing some subscriber apathy towards upgrading from analogue to digital,” he said. The Informa report foresees China’s digital TV homes rising from 10.1 million in 2006 to 78.4 million by 2012, and thus from 27.9% to 43.3% of the total in Asia. India is set to soar to 28.5 million digital TV homes by 2012, up from 2.5 million in 2006, more than doubling its percentage of the Asian total from 7% to 15.8%.