Market Trends

Wellingborough, UK, December 2, 2010--Over-the-Top (OTT) services have grown very popular over the last year and they will only get bigger considering the connectivity of home entertainment and portable CE devices. Based on a recently published study, Convergence in Home Entertainment and Portable CE Markets, IMS Research forecasts that over 2.1 billion connected devices will ship globally. This includes a forecast of 592 million fixed entertainment devices such as TV sets and game consoles, nearly 2 billion portable CE such as smartphones and tablets, and 268 million home network devices such as residential gateways.

Cambridge, Mass, November 30, 2010--According to NSR’s Global Satellite-Based Earth Observation, 2nd Edition study, the Earth Observation (EO) market growth, size and shape is more than ever affected by government contracts, in particular from military users. They are the largest consumers of high-resolution satellite imagery, as demonstrated by the recent EnhancedView contracts from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) that will generate a majority of the EO data market revenues over the next ten years.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. November 24, 2010 --(MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) set-top box shipments surpassed MPEG-2-only set-top box shipments for the first time in 2010, with about 53% MPEG-4 shipments worldwide. Despite the support for advanced encoding, however, pay-TV operators worldwide have been slow to support interactive features on set-top boxes, according to ABI Research.

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., Nov. 17, 2010 – Paid-for television content – whether through cable, satellite or the Internet – is preferred over free-to-air services – even in markets where free programming is more readily available, according to global research from Motorola Mobility.

Scottsdale, Ariz, November 4, 2010-In the third quarter of 2010, net subscriber additions in the global pay-TV market increased 2% over 2Q-2010 according to ABI Research’s recent pay-TV market data.   “The global number of pay-TV subscribers reached 692 million in the third quarter of 2010,” says ABI Research practice director Jason Blackwell. “Pay-TV subscriber growth is holding steady in a number of world regions.”

Amsterdam, Nov 2, 2010 – The composition of the connected home will shift dramatically in the next five years, with connected consumer electronics and mobile devices (mainly smartphones and tablet computers) comprising 80% of the seven billion connected nodes worldwide by 2015.  “The number of connected home nodes worldwide will grow to more than seven billion by year-end 2015,” said Kurt Scherf, VP, principal analyst, Parks Associates. “This market encompasses diverse stakeholders including managed service operators, CE manufacturers, content creators and aggregators, home networking chipset developers, and software and silicon vendors .”

Scottsdale,Ariz, October 12, 2010--The worldwide market for digital set-top boxes - including hard-to-track free-to-air (FTA) satellite (DBS) boxes - will grow from 205 million in 2010 to 226 million in 2015. Shipments in North America and Western Europe are falling following largely successful digital transitions, while Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe all see significant growth. Set-top boxes in China will grow at nearly 10% per year (CAGR).

Scottsdale, Ariz., Oct. 6, 2010-The 3D TV market will spend the next couple of years establishing itself and accumulating a base of content and devices (both TVs and Blu-ray players). In 2013, according to ABI Research, market growth will start to accelerate, and shipments of 3D TV sets will approach 50 million in 2015.

by Michelle Elbert

Los Angeles, October 15, 2010--The availability of wireless access to the Internet away from the home or office is not only becoming more pervasive, but consumers are actively seeking it out.  A 2009 study by Wakefield Research for the WiFi Alliance indicated that 79% of the 480 business-class passengers polled would take the availability of in-flight Internet into account when choosing an airline.