TV Electronics Report: Unit Shipments to Double as Digital TV Penetration Increases

DisplaySearch:New report covers Video Processors, De-interlacing/Scalars, and MPEG Video Processors. The focus is on sizing the market opportunity, the competitive situation, ATSC conversion, and adoption of unique TV features impacting the TV electronics market. The TV electronics market is expected to grow from 69 million units in 2005 to 141 million units in 2010. TV merchant chip suppliers shipped 39.5 million units in 2005 with total revenue of $374M. The growth came from consumer electronics companies using more merchant chip solutions as well as the growth of the flat panel TV market. Average selling prices for the merchant chips continue to drop aggressively with increasing competition and the desire to win business at the leading consumer electronics companies. The Video Processor market segment ASP dropped 25% through 2005. Three companies lead the TV electronics market share. Genesis retained their leadership position while Trident passed Pixelworks in 2005. Genesis shipped into 9.7 million TV sets, Trident shipped into 7.6 million TV sets, and Pixelworks shipped into 4.7 million TV sets in 2005.

• The merchant De-interlacing/Scalar (DS) segment was the largest in 2005 with $172M in revenue and 21.8 million units shipped. This segment is expected to largely disappear due to integration of this function into the VP or MVP products over the next few years. Genesis is the market leader in this segment.

• The merchant Video Processor (VP) segment was not far from the DS segment in terms of revenue. The merchant VP segment shipped approximately 16 million units in 2005 with $162M in revenue. Trident shipped the most VPs in 2005.

• The merchant MPEG Video Processor (MVP) segment was disappointing with only 1.8M units for 2005. ATI Technology was the market leader in this segment. Unfortunately, the transition to integrated ATSC tuners did not happened as quickly as many hoped. Tunerless HD-ready TVs or monitors are also slowing the growth of the ATSC tuners. Most integrated ATSC tuner TVs today use captive solutions. This will change in the future since merchant chip solutions are cheaper and more integrated than captive solutions.

The TV electronics market is undergoing tremendous growth due to the acceptance of flat panel TVs and the transition to digital broadcasting. The set top box companies with their MPEG expertise and the VP companies with their de-interlacing, scaling and image processing expertise are on a collision course for the 2007 design cycle. Trident and Genesis are the clear leaders but the long term winner is still to be decided. Quarterly TV Electronics Report. Publ 20060403