Monday July 25, 2011 – Maya Jasmin
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) tuner sales have plateaued and are expected to remain that way throughout the foreseeable future. The granddaddy of analog TV shut-offs (ASOs) (the U.S.) has passed, and digital TVs distributed throughout ATSC countries have mostly been equipped with ATSC tuners for some time now. Growth will largely be dependent on overall TV market growth for the next few years.
DTC projects that annual shipments of products with ATSC tuners will hover around 50 million units yearly for the next five years, with 52.2 million units shipping in 2010 and 50.6 million shipping in 2016. Only a few consumer product categories include ATSC tuners in significant quantities and the trend for tuner attach rates in all but TVs is in decline. Categories that contribute shipments to the DTC overall market forecast are PC tuners, set-top boxes (STB) and integrated digital TVs (IDTV).
PC TV Tuners are being eclipsed by other options for video content on mobile devices and PCs. The trend toward tablets has had a negative impact on the category since PC tuners are primarily of the USB form factor and most tablets do not include USB drives. DTC expects 1.7 million units to ship in 2012 and a slow gradual decline through 2016.
With the U.S. ASO long passed, shipments of STBs that include ATSC tuners are far off the heights they experienced during the peak of the ASO. Even with the Canadian and Korean ASOs looming, the category is quickly degenerating. Hybrid STBs that combine pay TV with over-the-air (OTA) reception are now driving this category, but major suppliers of these boxes are dropping inclusion of tuners within their STBs. And with most consumers choosing IDTVs in lieu of STBs, DTC expects 7 million units to ship in 2012, dwindling to under a million annual shipments by 2016.
IDTV shipments obviously fuel the ATSC market. DTC expects 43.8 million units to ship in 2012 and 48.3 million units to ship in 2016, making it the only category to experience growth. The growth in this category is primarily based on the U.S. TV market in which all TVs include ATSC tuners. IDTV is estimated to make up 89% of all ATSC shipments in 2012, growing to 95% of the overall market in 2016.
