Quadruple growth isn’t something you usually see in a sentence about set-top boxes nowadays. However, ABI Research is indeed forecasting that the 4K STB market will quadruple from less than two million units in 2015 to more than 7 million in 2016, and then grow by 46 percent annually through 2021.
To utterly understate the obvious to anyone with a even a fleeting acquaintance with the topic, the overall set-top box market is on the decline. And, ABI predicts a further drop by about 9 percent in 2016 to less than $16 billion in revenue, with both pay TV and free-to-air boxes losing value.
“Digital transitions are taking longer than initially planned and the market is experiencing significant downward pressure on set-top box pricing,” Sam Rosen, managing director and VP at ABI Research, explains. “Hardware revenues will fall, but value through software and services remains an opportunity. Providers should be looking to take on logistics and lifecycle challenges, in addition to testing and integration, to help the overall market flourish as well as focusing on 4K and HDR color set-top boxes will in the years ahead.”
Set-top providers are increasing in scale due to recent mergers and acquisitions, including Arris taking over Pace and Technicolor acquiring Cisco’s STB unit. Additionally, Huawei, at just more than $1 billion in revenues, leaped ahead of a number of vendors that faced a difficult year with drops of 25 to 40 percent in revenues, including EchoStar and Humax, according to ABI.
Regionally, China, which overtook the U.S. as the largest STB market by units in 2010, remains in the lead. ABI says India beat out the U.S. just last year as a failed digital cable transition spurred a large amount of satellite set-top shipments. Given market circumstances, ABI Research foresees that India will continue to grow box shipments and likely surpass China as shipment leader in 2018 or 2019.
“Significant market consolidation already occurred,” Rosen concludes . “Operators worldwide are now carefully considering new opportunities to deliver video services, specifically through the use of streaming media adapters and adaptive bitrate, better known as ABR, IP-based protocols. It is important to note that satellite broadcast remains a significant factor in pay TV distribution while terrestrial platforms, augmented by set-top boxes with some storage and advanced IP services, are becoming important for select telco operators who are backing away from licensing content.”
ABI Research’s “Set-Top Box, CPE, and Video Devices Service” analysis includes research reports, market data, insights and competitive assessments.
