After just adding up the set top box shipments for the first quarter of 2009 iSuppli says it is confident that set tops generally will be up around 4.2% during 2009 and says they after that they will grow at a 9% compound annual growth rate to reach 200 million devices shipped during 2013, from 131.2 million in 2008 .
iSuppli believes that terrestrial and satellite set top shipments were flat during the first quarter time but said that both cable boxes and IPTV set tops have both shown strong growth shipping at over 50% higher levels, with cable being driven by rollouts in China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific region and IPTV almost catching up with the number of cable set tops shipped the previous year.
Considering that IPTV is operating from a much smaller installed base than cable, matching last years shipments in absolute numbers, is still quite impressive.
‘In the fourth quarter, when the wheels were literally coming off of the world’s economies, the leading set top makers were reporting surging sales,’ said Jordan Selburn, principal analyst for semiconductor design and set tops at iSuppli.
‘This phenomenon carried over into 2009 and beyond with first-quarter shipments of set tops. And while they were down from the fourth-quarter holiday season, they were still ahead of the first quarter from 2008’an unusual event for any product in today’s depressed electronics market.’
iSuppi also says that premium boxes including DVR set tops and HD products will grow ahead of the curve and in 2008 they almost doubled to 22.4 million systems. This growth will continue in 2009, with a 28% rise.
Among premium boxes, HD set tops are on their way to becoming the new standard. Shipments of these boxes are set to grow at a 22.8% CAGR until 2013, and by the end of the forecast period will take the lead in market share. This is being helped by a number of factors, including HD TV sales and improving HD content from service providers.
DVR enabled set tops will maintain a CAGR of 18% driven by the plummeting cost of hardware, especially disk drives. Later in the forecast, in-home media servers and whole-home DVRs will eat into DVR sales.