With news that Japan completed its transition from analog to digital television (DTV) broadcast in July, the growth opportunity for DTV now is shifting to developing countries, which by and large continue to employ analog sets, according to the IHS iSuppli Home & Consumer Electronics service from information and analysis provider IHS.
Nearly half of global television shipments in 2011—at 45.8 percent—still are expected to be analog sets, with the remaining 54.2 percent being DTVs. However, as the transition to DTV spreads, analog will decrease to less than one-quarter of global television set shipments, at 23.3 percent, while digital will rise to 76.7 percent.
North America, much of Western Europe and now Japan have finished their analog-to-DTV switchovers, marking the completion of the digital broadcast transition in most of the major developed economies of the world. However, from a global perspective the market and technology shift away from analog TV broadcasting remains far from complete. During the next four years, DTV broadcast switchovers will occur in emerging regions such as Latin America, China and Asia-Pacific. Because of this, virtually all of the growth in DTV sales will occur in these developing economies.
Several forces continue to propel the global market toward digital TV broadcasting, including improved image quality and content selection for consumers. Other factors include the rising amount of high-definition content, which requires newer technology to be deployed for more efficient and higher-quality distribution. However, foremost among the forces pushing DTV broadcast transitions is the revenue that can be generated by the reallocation of spectrum formerly used by analog TV.
Incorporation of digital reception functionality into television sets has represented a significant growth area for the TV semiconductor market during the past 10 years, as most digital TV models now are designed with integrated digital tuner, demodulator and decoder functions that previously were implemented in separate digital set-top boxes.
However, television video processor suppliers have moved rapidly to integrate many of these functions into large system-on-chip solutions, thereby lowering implementation costs for digital TV substantially during the past five years.
In the wake of the TV market transition to digital comes the age of the “smart” TV, with all major TV original equipment manufacturers offering new features and functionality via Internet connectivity to TV sets. IHS expects a transition to occur from digital to smart in order to offer similar opportunities to the TV semiconductor supply chain, just as digital has in the recent past.
The worldwide DTV market is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent from 2010 to 2015, with annual shipments expected to reach 245.9 million units in 2015.
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