The adoption of digital PC-TV Tuners will accelerate in Europe as Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) services continue to expand there. Asia, China, and India will present strong growth opportunities.
North America is expected to see a surge during 2009, when analog TV is cut off, and new mobile digital broadcast TV (MDTV) services are introduced by major US TV stations. The high-tech market research firm In-Stat cautions that the uptake of PC-TV tuners is not guaranteed, as they face challenges from a wide variety of options, consumers now have to use computers to gather and view a wide range of video content.
"The challenges to PC-TV Tuner adoption include easy-to-use Cable, TelcoTV, and satellite TV services that provide high quality Video-on-Demand, Internet distributed video content, IPTV services, and mobile broadband, such as 3G, WiFi, and WiMAX," says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst.
While some European cable and satellite operators allow the use of digital PC-TV tuners with conditional access to receive premium content, the US market will take some time to implement CableLab's tru2way technology.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
• By 2012, there will be 30.8 million PC-TV tuners sold annually, with a total retail value of USD 1.7 billion.
• Western Europe and Japan lead in the uptake of digital PC-TV tuners.
• In 2005, 60.1% of PC-TV Tuners shipped were analog, but the analog tuner market share dropped to 48.3% in 2006, and then to 39.7% in 2007. |
