The DTT Set Top Box market continues to expand, as countries migrate from standard definition (SD) TV to high definition (HD) programs, and digital video recorders become more important.  New products like hybrid web-to-TV set top boxes also will contribute to the long-term growth of DTT STBs pushing revenues to nearly US$ 6 billion by 2014, says In-Stat.

According to NSR’s Government and Military Satellite Communications, 7th Edition report the industry will continue revenue gains until 2019 despite the imminent troop drawdown and complete withdrawal of allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Policy changes in these hotspots are beginning to affect demand trends and market potential, which has grown robustly since 2002. There appears to be a turning point in market dynamics where sustainability and growth levels may have reached their peak.

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.

(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.

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.

According to the latest figures from ABI Research, global pay-TV service revenue totaled $55.5 billion during the third quarter of 2010, approximately a 9% increase from the same period in 2009.   Currently more than half of global telco TV service revenues come from Western Europe where telco TV penetration is already quite high, and net subscriber additions in the region are expected to slow due to that penetration. The result: telco TV’s market share in terms of subscriber numbers and service revenue is expected to decline in Western Europe in the coming years.

Despite the difficulties faced to date, the timing is ripe for mobile video services to take off in certain Asia-Pacific markets due to the enhanced capability of the networks, increasing popularity and affordability of smartphones, and improvements in the mobile video business, according to a new report from Pyramid Research.

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.”

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.

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).