Digital Radio: Turning Up the Volume on Satellite and Terrestrial Radio Adoption
Digital radio is the general term for audio services that are broadcasted in a digital format on either a satellite platform, or a terrestrial platform, such as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB).
The growth in satellite radio adoption is driving digital radio shipments in the US. In other regions, most notably in the UK, the growth in terrestrial DAB adoption is driving digital radio shipments. The launch of Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB) services in Japan and Korea, along with increased promotional activity in Singapore, Australia and Taiwan, will drive digital radio shipments in Asia.
In-Stat’s latest report, "Digital Radio: Turning Up the Volume on Satellite and Terrestrial Radio Adoption" contains five-year unit shipments, ASP, and revenue forecasts for digital terrestrial and digital satellite radios (including DMB receivers that are not integrated into mobile phones). The forecasts are provided for the Americas, Europe, and Asia. A US satellite radio subscriber forecast and digital radio Bill of Materials are also included.
In-Stat believes that the traditional Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) market is nearing its end of life as a competitive product segment. While this segment will not disappear altogether, it will be negatively impacted as users switch to other products that are incorporating the functionality of PDAs, such as smartphones. By 2009, we expect the traditional PDA segment to be composed of lower-end devices designed for specific vertical markets.
In-Stat’s latest report, "Traditional PDA Market Continues Its Decline" (#IN0502135ID), covers the worldwide PDA market for the past six months. It provides unit shipment and market share comparisons between this year and last year during the same time period. This report also provides updates to features, components, and devices that have occurred in the last year. Finally, the report updates In-Stat’s forecast for worldwide shipments and revenue for 2003 to 2009.
Video Content Availability Will Be A Key Factor in Portable Media Player Growth
Since the digital audio player market reached mass-market appeal in 2003, manufacturers had high expectations for what they believed to be the natural evolution in portable content – video on the go. Vendors hurried to launch Portable Media Players (PMPs), which are portable devices that have the ability to play both audio and video content. However, the market did not meet expectations this past year due to low consumer awareness, high price points, and, perhaps most importantly, lack of easy access to compelling and copyrighted video content. The availability of downloadable video content will be a key driver for the PMP market; and as consumers start to demand more portable content, there will be increased activity among manufacturers and content providers to offer legitimate video content for PMPs. This report covers market drivers for PMP devices. It also takes an in-depth look at existing video content sites, PMP manufacturers and component suppliers. This report includes the results of a US consumer survey about the use of, and knowledge of, PMP devices, and finally, it provides five-year forecasts for worldwide PMP shipments and revenues, as well as average sales prices.
Networking Technology Brings Intelligence Into Today's Smart Home
The premise behind the smart home is to use networking technology to integrate appliances, devices, and services within the home in an effort to control and monitor the entire living space from a remote location, as well as from within the home. While the smart home seems to be a valuable and convenient concept in theory, there has yet to be widespread consumer demand for products found in a smart home. This is because consumers have high expectations for both performance and ease of use. In addition, expectations for price are disproportionately low. However, several factors such as pervasive Internet access, home network growth and the acceleration of broadband access to many homes are driving consumer awareness of smart homes and smart home products. As a result, we expect this to be an interesting market to watch over the next few years. In-Stat’s latest report, "Networking Technology Brings Intelligence Into Today's Smart Home" (#IN0501829ID), includes information relating to home network growth, as well as consumer survey information and a detailed discussion of smart home market trends.
Tablet PC 2005: Increasing Shipments Amid a Cloudy Future
The Tablet PC market approaches its three-year anniversary with increasing shipments, but mixed success. Referring to PCs that run Microsoft’s Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system, shipments have yet to reach the lofty heights that some backers predicted upon launch. Significant developments in 2004 include NEC leaving the US market, and ViewSonic ceasing production. On the positive side, Lenovo, which recently purchased IBM’s PC business, entered the space with its X41 Thinkpad.
Vertical market segments, including health care, insurance, and real estate, have adopted Tablet PCs. However, horizontal corporate markets, where a large number of notebook PCs are sold, have been slow to embrace Tablet PCs. Several vendors have introduced new, larger Tablets that more closely resemble traditional notebooks in an attempt to appeal to this market.
This report contains worldwide annual unit shipment and revenue forecasts for Tablet PCs through 2009. It also contains an annual regional breakdown of Tablet PC shipments through 2009. New in this year’s report are 2004 Tablet PC shipments and revenues by vendor, as well as 2004 vendor shipments by region. Extensive analysis of Tablet PCs in both horizontal and vertical markets is included, as well as the potential of Tablet PCs in the consumer segment. The report includes profiles of some of the markets’ leading players, including Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Acer, Intel, Microsoft, Motion, and Fujitsu.
Portable Digital Audio Players: Moving to the Beat of a Booming Market
Worldwide unit shipments of portable audio players (HDD and solid-state) will reach 104 million units in 2009, up from 27.8 million units in 2004, representing a CAGR of 30.2% between 2004 and 2009. Drivers for this booming market include falling prices, the availability of legitimate subscription and pay-per-download online music sites, smaller hard disk drives, and increasing Flash memory capacities. Due to increased competition, vendors are striving to differentiate products by offering a wide range of price points, memory capacities and features. As a result, we will see further segmentation in the portable audio player market. The hard disk drive (HDD) digital audio player segment is sub-divided into two categories: the microdrive segment and the 1.8-inch segment. In addition, we will examine the Flash-based MP3 player market by two segments: the less than 1 GB Flash-based players and the 1 GB or more Flash-based players. We believe Flash-based MP3 players will lead in unit shipments, but HDD player sales are driving revenue growth. In-Stat’s latest report, Portable Digital Audio Players: Moving to the Beat of a Booming Market (#IN0502148ID), includes results of a consumer survey about MP3 player ownership, profiles of leading portable audio player manufacturers and suppliers as well as forecasts for portable audio player shipments and revenue.
Handheld Game Platforms 2005: More Competitors With Convergence Devices
A suddenly active handheld market became even more crowded over the past year. With the release of three new consoles, the handheld market is a long way from the time when the Game Boy was the only game in town. While three years ago, the market was essentially limited to a single device, there are now six handhelds on the market.
The primary result of the recent entrants to this market is to skew the handheld demographic older. The primary means to do this is to offer more graphics-intensive gaming, as well as other functionality in addition to gaming. Different platforms offer different capabilities, which include: digital audio and video playback, digital photo viewing, mobile phone, PDA, camera, instant messaging, and even GPS capability. The result is that handheld game consoles are morphing into portable media convergence devices.
This report includes in-depth analysis and forecasts for all handheld platforms. Annual shipment and revenue forecasts through 2009 are provided for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Nokia N-Gage, Tapwave Zodiac and Gizmondo. Geographic shipment breakdowns for 2004 and 2005 are provided for each console. Results from In-Stat’s Residential Technology Survey on handheld platforms are also provided.
Shipments of PDAs continued their decline in 2004. While PDAs have evolved into multimedia and business data devices, they are also converging with smartphones and other multimedia devices such as portable media players. We expect the coming year to follow the trend of declining shipments, as more products become categorized in other product segments; however, with advances in software and components and lower unit prices, the market will still offer opportunities for consumers in niche markets and replacement users, and for the corporate space with new more ruggedly designed corporate products and wireless PDAs.
This report compiles research and analyses on the worldwide PDA market and provides profiles of major vendors and their most recent products. It also discusses market trends, opportunities and challenges facing this mature market. It forecasts unit shipments and revenues for the period 2003 to 2009 and depicts processor market shares and revenue. In addition, it provides a review of the market in 2004, in terms of unit shipments, vendor and operating system market shares and trends.
In-Stat defines PDAs as handheld devices that are either pen or keypad-centric, and are capable of synchronizing with desktop or notebook computers. Some products may include wireless capabilities that enable Internet access and voice communication.
