SCOTTSDALE, AZ – Shipments of home media gateways will surpass 24 million in 2017, according to a new report by MRG, an SNL Kagan company.
The report, Demand for Home Media Gateway Set-Top Boxes on the Upswing, predicts that global unit shipments of home media gateway products are on track to reach nearly 10 million by the end of this year, a solid increase from the 7.7 million units that shipped in 2012. Revenues of home media gateway products are projected to reach nearly $3 billion in 2013, up from $2.3 billion last year.
Home media gateways are a type of set-top box appearing in homes of pay-TV subscribers. This box offers features that permit pay-TV service providers to better meet the needs of today's connected consumer, such as multi-room personal video recording, streaming IP video, and support for multi-screen video (aka ‘TV Everywhere’).
Home media gateway products integrate traditional set-top box functions, like support for conditional access and TV tuning, with enhanced connectivity capabilities. These enhanced capabilities include support for home networking and ‘over the top’ (OTT) video.
Currently, average sales prices for home media gateway products are around $300 per box, which generally limit the penetration of home media gateways to the high-income household regions of the world. Through 2015, the report is projecting that virtually all home media gateway product deployments will be confined to North America and Europe.
Headed gateways currently account for the lion’s share of home media gateway unit shipments. In 2013, only 2% of global unit shipments are projected to be ‘headless’ home media gateways.
“Unit shipments of home media gateway products are on track to grow rapidly”, said senior analyst Mike Paxton in the report’s news release. “However, the product segment is currently just a small portion of the worldwide set-top box market. For example, in 2013 home media gateway product shipments are projected to account for just 4% of total set-top box unit shipments.”
