According to Grand View Research, the global 4K set-top box market size is expected to reach $3.65 billion by 2024. Increasing demand for UltraHD 4K video content and growing sales of 4K TVs and display devices is expected to positively shape the UltraHD set top box market's growth prospects.
Industry vendors have leveraged on providing set top boxes with enhanced broadcast capabilities on Digital Video Broadcasting-Satellite (DVB-S/DVB-S2) standards. The introduction of OTT devices such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Google's Chromecast media streaming devices have opened up major growth avenues in the industry, Grand View says.
The research house expects increasing numbers of UltraHD content providers to drive industry growth, but high initial and up gradation costs, along with high subscription fees for 4K content, are expected to challenge growth over the forecast period.
Other findings indicate:
- IPTV/UltraHD set top boxes contributed to more than 20% of the market revenue in 2014 and are anticipated to witness significant growth over the next eight years.
- Hybrid set-top box devices are expected to witness a CAGR of more than 5% throughout the forecast period.
- The North America UltraHD set-top market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 3% from 2016 to 2024. STB hardware vendors are extensively focusing on providing UltraHD set-tops with add-on features such as HDMI 2.0 multimedia interface and USB ports for playing media from external memory devices.
- The Asia Pacific 4K set-top market accounted for more than 25% of the global revenue share in 2014 and is expected to see significant growth over the forecast period, particularly in China and India due to the strong presence of UltraHD set-top manufacturers in those countries. OTT-based streaming devices are becoming the set-top of choice for satellite TV providers in emerging markets such as China and India, where open-source content is abundant. The regional set-top service providers offer packages with live streaming video along with their own offerings.