[Satellite TODAY 04-26-13] Broadcom and STMicro tied in unit shipments for the worldwide set-top box IC market in 2012, with both companies delivering between 85 and 86 million video SoCs for set-top boxes. In the third place, Ali Technology saw significant growth within free-to-air terrestrial boxes by Chinese OEMs and delivered an impressive 65 million SoCs.

 

     “The set-top box IC market has continued to be in a strange over-reporting situation for four years,” ABI Research practice director Sam Rosen said in a statement. “Vendors public claims and internal counts of STB SoC shipments exceed the number of set-top box shipments by 5 to 25 percent, depending on year, for each of the last four years, even after accounting for the separate chips integrated in complex set-top boxes.” 

 

    High-end set-top boxes often include a video SoC, tuner/demodulator, MoCA chipset, and networking chip, for example. The adjacent smart set-top box market, coupled with possible blurring between the STB and Digital TV markets, could explain some of this over reporting.