Rebecca Kurlak, research analyst and author of the study, states, “Uptake of operator deployed IP+DTT STBs has been popular in both the U.K. and France, but it is anticipated that Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands will also see an increase through 2014. As a global projection, IMS Research expects 25 percent of IP shipments to be IP+DTT STBs. In Eastern Europe, Poland and the Czech Republic will comprise 54 percent of Eastern Europe’s IP+DTT shipments in 2014. Not only will IP+DTT STBs experience a surge from operators, but in the retail market as well. Fetch TV and Video Futur are just two examples of operator-free TV service business models available to Western Europe households. The boxes supply a la carte VOD offerings in tandem with free-to-air (FTA) DTT channels. The STBs are as compelling as traditional pay-TV operator STBs by offering DVR functionality, VOD and digital multichannel TV capabilities. The only drawback is the fact that sports programming and popular specialty channels remain absent from the content offerings.”
In addition to television household forecasts (split by picture quality and DVR functionality), the study provides detailed analysis of IP and IP+DTT STB shipments and revenues for three major global regions and three sub-regions, with further analysis on 64 individual countries. Two new features of the report include forecasts for IPTV Households by Telco Tier and segmentation of IP STB Shipments by MPEG-2 vs. MPEG-4 AVC compression. IMS Research is the first to incorporate this segmentation in their reporting.