4K set-top box market will quadruple from less than two million units in 2015 to more than 7 million in 2016, and then grow by 46% annually through 2021, according to ABI Reserch. However, the market research firm said that the overall set-top box market is on the decline, expected to drop by about nine percent in 2016 to less than $16 billion in revenue, with both Pay TV and free-to-air boxes losing value.
“Digital transitions are taking longer than initially planned and the market is experiencing significant downward pressure on set-top box pricing,” says Sam Rosen, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. “Hardware revenues will fall, but value through software and services remains an opportunity. Providers should be looking to take on logistics and lifecycle challenges, in addition to testing and integration, to help the overall market flourish as well as focusing on 4K and HDR color set-top boxes in the years ahead.”
Set-top box providers are increasing in scale due to recent mergers and acquisitions, including market leader Arris taking over Pace and Technicolor acquiring Cisco’s set-top box unit. Additionally, Huawei, at just more than $1 billion in revenues, leaped ahead of a number of vendors that faced a difficult year with drops of 25 to 40% in revenues, including EchoStar and Humax.
“Significant market consolidation already occurred,” concludes Rosen. “Operators worldwide are now carefully considering new opportunities to deliver video services, specifically through the use of streaming media adapters and adaptive bitrate, better known as ABR, IP-based protocols. It is important to note that satellite broadcast remains a significant factor in Pay TV distribution while terrestrial platforms, augmented by set-top boxes with some storage and advanced IP services, are becoming important for select telco operators who are backing away from licensing content.”
