Now here’s a little report from In-Stat which, while we can’t really credit the US researcher much for the content, we can agree with. It’s all about TV Can tuners shifting ‘en masse’ to silicon tuners.
The reason we can’t give In-Stat too much credit is because when you speak to any of the silicon designers or providers out there, they get very exited about this and provide you with all sorts of numbers.
However In-Stat has done the legwork to put a number on this and come up with a chip market worth $500 million, by 2014, with companies like NXP, Microtune, Maxlinear, Broadcom, ST Microelectronics, Texas Instruments and about ten others, making up the running for this brand new market.
Traditional ‘can’ type TV tuners are still the mainstream for high-volume television sets, the next-generation of ultra-slim TVs will need compact tuners to enable thinner circuit boards. Smaller-screen TVs that need to add digital reception capabilities will also benefit from smaller, less power-hungry Silicon Tuners. So thin-ness and power are the drivers.
‘During this decade, the global market for TV Tuners will make an epochal transition from traditional ‘can’ type TV Tuners to all solid state Silicon Tuners’ says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst. ‘The Silicon Tuner ‘contenders’ have already displaced the ‘can’ tuners in most Satellite TV and Cable TV set-top boxes, and in Personal Video Recorder (PVR) end-products.’
Silicon Tuners create ‘pull through’ for Systems-on Chips (SoCs) that include demodulators, video decoders and graphics capabilities
Can-type Tuners will gradually lose market share to Silicon Tuners through 2014 the company says.