The network, Mr. Jordan said, has as high a household penetration in Israel as anywhere in the world.

By the end of the century the channel's household penetration is expected to have reached about 11 million.

But while the format is growing, household penetration remains at about 1 percent and many industry analysts don't foresee the laser disk ever becoming a mass-market product.

FOR electronics manufacturers, the level of household penetration is a key measure of a product's success.

Telecom New Zealand has a relatively high household penetration and earned profits of $148 million last year.

The steady broadband growth will push household penetration to 21 percent by 2010, equivalent to 106 million subscribers, but this is nowhere near market potential.

The Post had the greatest household penetration of any large newspaper in the country.

Customers are more educated, the industry has more household penetration and even at the major brokerages the focus is more on financial planning.

"The big difference between cookies and soup is that soup already has very high household penetration," Ms. Ghez said.

And the company's newer channels will gradually run out of room to expand as they reach the limits of household penetration, analysts say.