Although digital TV has been widely deployed throughout most of the developed world, many digital TV receiver suppliers can count on future growth within certain product categories and markets.
Yes, receiver sales are moderating for the cable and DTH satellite segments but digital terrestrial TV (DTT) receivers will sustain overall healthy growth as millions of households will add set-top boxes (STBs) or integrated digital TVs (IDTVs) as large swaths of the world’s population experience the end of over-the-air (OTA) analog TV transmissions or will have access to OTA digital TV channels for the first time.
DTT receiver growth will outpace the more mature pay TV categories. DTC expects digital TV receiver shipments, in the aggregate, to grow steadily through 2015 and beyond. In fact, of all the categories listed, digital cable is the only category expected to see any kind of decline; and the decline forecasted here can be considered more of a leveling off, with shipments of nearly 50 million expected in 2015.
IDTVs are expected to experience the most growth in our forecast as countries continue to transition to OTA digital TV and for the integration of DTT tuners in TVs becomes more widespread, DTC estimates that 179 million IDTVs will ship in 2015. China is perhaps the best example of a wide open market ripe for explosive IDTV growth. With many of the world’s major developed markets now trying to figure out how to market HDTVs and 3D HDTVs, the Chinese TV market still has a sizeable analog TV component.
According to DTC’s latest domestic Chinese television market research in conjunction with Chinese-based RedTech Advisors, 45 million digital sets were sold into the domestic Chinese distribution network in 2010, of which roughly 70% or over 31 million, were from top domestic suppliers. Only a small percentage of these sets contain DTT tuners. With China having approximately 385 million TV households and with OTA digital TV transmissions just beginning, there’s plenty of opportunity for blockbuster IDTV sales.
For more information on DTC’s digital TV receiver forecasts, you can go to here to see a table of contents for our Network Connected Receivers report. More information on DTC’s domestic Chinese LCD TV tracking service, please go here.
