Global shipments of Digital Media Adapters – devices designed to stream content to the TV from the internet and IP connected devices – will grow nearly 40% this year, with the market on track to double in size by 2017, according to a new industry report from Futuresource Consulting.
“The market shipped almost 13 million DMA units globally last year, with the US accounting for nearly half of the shipments,” says Will Pratt, Research Analyst, Futuresource Consulting. “Fuelled by the continued success of Apple TV, the rise of Roku and underlying demand for devices that carry key content services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, we’re going to see healthy market growth continue for some years to come.”
China is the second largest market, accounting for 17% of global shipments last year, climbing to 30% by 2017 according to Futuresource forecasts.
Western Europe is currently close behind, with 15% of market shipments last year, expected to grow at 7% CAGR through to 2017.
“DMAs have traditionally been a difficult sell, as vendors and retailers have been unable to convey a simple message about the features and benefits,” says Pratt. “Often, the devices have been confined to technical networking product aisles away from TV sets, which has compounded the problem. However, with the rise of connected TVs we expect the concept of a device which upgrades an old TV to become a connected TV to gain some traction.
“While streaming personal media files between devices is still a motivator for purchase, the emphasis is increasingly shifting to streaming content directly from the content provider over the internet, without the consumer ever needing to own the content. This trend has been predominantly driven by ever-increasing broadband speeds and greater availability of on-demand services. Additionally, we’re seeing consumers displaying digital photos on the big screen and this is holding strong as another popular feature.”
The new Digital Media Adaptors report from Futuresource focuses exclusively on networked devices that are able to convert IP Video to HDM or analogue video suitable for viewing on a large screen. Dedicated audio streamers are excluded and the report also excludes Slingbox and similar products, conversely designed to convert video signals to IP for distribution to other devices across a network.
