Five companies — Broadcom, STMicro, Renesas, Trident, and Sigma dominate the global set-top box System on Chip (SoC) IC market which is valued at $3.3 billion in 2010, controlling around 85 percent of the market share.
Broadcom holds the first place with the largest percentage of market share, followed by STMicro. The two companies diverge on what countries they target with their product shipments, according to ABI Research.
STMicro focuses on developing regions and free-to-air solutions, with a significantly lower ASP compared to Broadcom’s primary customers in cable and satellite in North America and Western Europe.
Despite 2010 being a banner year for the set-top box IC market, the market is projected to remain relatively flat through 2016, due to market contractions in North America and Western Europe, which will be offset by growth in both the Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
Average selling price (ASP) increases due to advanced features, and delivery of High Definition (HD) video is offset by general price pressure and growth in low-cost chipsets in developing regions,” said Jason Blackwell, practice director, digital home, ABI Research.
Within the set-top box IC market there is also a growing disparity between the two extremes in set-top box products.
There is significant fragmentation of the market, with high-end boxes used in Digital Video Recorders (DVR) supporting rich electronic program guides (EPGs) gaining high performance processors and even graphical processing units (GPUs), while low end chips for cost-sensitive customers in developing markets provide the bare minimum functionality required to deliver video functions,” said Sam Rosen, senior analyst, digital home.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
