The overall satellite set top box market grew in 2008 after all says US researcher In-Stat, and India’s satellite TV explosion seems to have been the main driver. The proliferation of High Definition DVRs was one of the key drivers in other markets.
We revealed last week that DTH suppliers in India are taking off, with the national TV broadcaster Doordashan offering a free to air satellite service and 6 competing pay TV systems ‘ one of them yet to be fully rolled out, accounting for over 13 million customers by the end of March 2009, from 3 million a year before ‘ a rise of 10 million homes not counting Doordashan.
But in other markets, particularly those driven by IPTV or Cable, like Asia Pacific and Latin America, satellite TV set top sales remained sluggish or even negative.
The improvement in shipments of HD in the more advanced markets means that In-Stat expects HD DVRs to overtake shipments of Standard Definition DVR boxes in 2009, with some providers no longer offering SD DVR boxes at all.
Michelle Abraham, In-Stat analyst said, ‘More providers will stop offering them in the future, with some going so far as to eliminate all SD boxes from their product lineup in a few years.’
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
The growth in satellite set tops was 6% during 2008, and Thomson was the largest provider with Coship, EchoStar, Homecast, Humax, KaonMedia, Pace, Samsung, TechniSat, and Altech UEC all shipping significant numbers.
However the semiconductor Bill of Materials (BOM) for satellite set tops has a huge spread, from under $25 to well over $100 depending on which features are offered and issues like hard drive size and the number of supported video streams affecting the BOM.
Key semiconductor suppliers include Taiwan’s Ali Corp, Broadcom, NEC, NXP, STMicroelectronics and Zoran.