ABI Research says the 4k set-top box market will expand four-fold over the next few years.
The company says the market will grow from less than two million units in 2015 to more than 7 million in 2016 and then grow by 46% annually through 2021.
However, the overall set-top box market remains in decline, and is expected to drop by about 9% in 2016 to less than $16 billion (€14.23 million) 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, MD and VP 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 will in the years ahead.”
Recent acquisitions have enabled set-top box providers to increase their scale. These include market leader Arris that has acquired Pace and Technicolor’s purchase of 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.
