A new report by Research and Markets entitled "Global Set Top Box Market 2014-2018"  forecasts the global Set Top Box (STB)  market to grow at a CAGR of 2.14 percent over the period 2014-2018. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increase adoption of HD STB. The Global STB market has also been witnessing the growth in the number of pay TV subscribers. However, the high cost of advanced set top boxes could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

Global smartphone shipments showed better than expected growth in 1Q14, rising 1.13% QoQ to 266.9 million units, according to market intelligence provider TrendForce. “The Q1 momentum came mostly from the emerging market sectors and China,” noted Avril Wu, Assistant Vice President of TrendForce. “The Chinese smartphone manufacturers’ increased 4G smartphone production is key to the smartphone industry higher than anticipated Q1 growth.”

The latest Point Topic Global Broadband Report reveals that there were 678.6m subscribers worldwide at the end of 2013. The report tracks the take-up of fixed broadband services at country and technology level across the globe and the latest growth trends up to the end of Q4 2013.

 The growth in Q4 2013 was lower than both the proceeding quarter and the corresponding quarter in 2012. Other key findings of the report include:

Worldwide home network penetration is expected to climb from 24.8% in 2013 to 33.2% by 2018.Growth is driven by the continued spread of broadband services and demand for multiscreen video services.What is seen as commonplace in mature markets, including server provided broadband routers with integrated Wi-Fi access points and leveraging fixed broadband connections to offload expensive mobile data packages while consuming large amounts of content, is slower to move to emerging markets.In some cases, this is driven primarily by low service ARPU while in others it is simply limited fixed broad

Nearly 50 per cent of people experience problems with their Internet at least once a day, according to a survey  by Mole Valley Farmers, in conjunction with Europasat, and sent to customers of the organisation which mostly serves farmers and rural dwellers.in the United Kingdom.

The figure paints a worrying picture of the UK’s rural broadband provision. In total, the Government has already invested £530million in to fibre broadband and former Culture Secretary Maria Miller has been reported as wanting the UK’s Internet to be among the best in the world.

Year-end figures for broadband and IPTV, published today by the Broadband Forum, show a slowing but steady growth in broadband subscribers with some significant trends in technology and regional growth in new markets. The figures, prepared by Point Topic, highlight the addition of over 40 million new users world-wide, an annual increase of 6.15%, bringing the global total up to 678,455,893.

Primary distribution encoders are used to deliver linear TV signals to the facilities of those who will be redistributing the signals to consumers. The signals may be encoded using the older MPEG-2 or newer H.264 compression schemes. In the future, SNL Kagain  >expects programmers will use the latest HEVC compression scheme to deliver both Ultra HD and HD signals.

Content delivery networks (CDNs) are currently providing one of the fastest revenue-generating markets, estimated to grow from US$ 3.71 billion in 2014 to US$ 12.16 billion by 2019 with rapid explosion of web-based content, mainly online music, online video and online transaction-based services enhancing demand,  according to a new Marketsand Markets report.

Despite the withdrawal and reduction of troops from and Afghanistan, unmanned aerial systems (UASs) remain essential for conducting intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike operations. As Department of Defense (DoD) budgets for UASs decline, however, domestic UAS manufacturers must exploit opportunities in foreign military and the global commercial UAS market to stay afloat.

Although telematics technologies and services were first adopted by the long-haul trucking industry in the United States more than 20 years ago, adoption in the non-trucking sector is expected to equal the trucking industry in terms of numbers of connected vehicles by the end of 2014 and will dominate the commercial fleet telematics industry by the end of 2019, accounting for almost 50 million vehicles globally.