According to ABI Research, the market should then grow by 46% annually through 2021. However, the overall STB market is on the decline, expected to drop by about 9% in 2016 to less than $16 billion in revenue, with both pay-TV and free-to-air boxes losing value.

“Digital transitions are taking longer than initially planned and the market is experiencing significant downward pressure on set-top box pricing,” said Sam Rosen, MD and vice president at ABI Research. “Hardware revenues will fall, but value through software and services remains an opportunity. Providers should be looking to take on logistics and lifecycle challenges, in addition to testing and integration, to help the overall market flourish as well as focusing on 4K and HDR colour set-top boxes will in the years ahead.”

STB providers are increasing in scale due to recent mergers and acquisitions, including market leader Arris taking over Pace and Technicolor acquiring Cisco’s set-top box unit. Additionally, Huawei, at just more than $1 billion in revenues, leaped ahead of a number of vendors that faced a difficult year with drops of 25-40% in revenues, including EchoStar and Humax.

Regionally, China, which overtook the US as the largest STB market by units in 2010, remains in the lead. India beat out the US just last year as a failed digital cable transition spurred a large amount of satellite set-top box shipments. Given market circumstances, ABI Research predicts India will continue to grow its set-top box shipments and likely surpass China as shipment leader in 2018 or 2019.

“Significant market consolidation already occurred,” added Rosen. “Operators worldwide are now carefully considering new opportunities to deliver video services, specifically through the use of streaming media adapters and adaptive bitrate, better known as ABR, IP-based protocols. It is important to note that satellite broadcast remains a significant factor in pay-TV distribution while terrestrial platforms, augmented by set-top boxes with some storage and advanced IP services, are becoming important for select telco operators who are backing away from licensing content.”