CORRECTING and REPLACING: The Market Scale of Digital TV Semiconductor in 2005 Reached US $4.34 Billion, and US $11.5 Billion is Expected to Hit by the Year of 2010.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- First graph, first sentence of release should read: Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c48661) has announced the addition of "China Digital TV IC (Chip) Industry Report, 2006" to their offering (sted Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c48661) has announced the addition of the new Frost & Sullivan "China Digital TV IC (Chip) Industry Report, 2006" to their offering).

The corrected release reads:

THE MARKET SCALE OF DIGITAL TV SEMICONDUCTOR IN 2005 REACHED US $4.34 BILLION, AND US $11.5 BILLION IS EXPECTED TO HIT BY THE YEAR OF 2010

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c48661) has announced the addition of "China Digital TV IC (Chip) Industry Report, 2006" to their offering.

The world shipment of digital TV in the second quarter of 2006 achieved 15.5 million, accounting for 37% of the total TV shipment and 80% of the total incomes. The digital TV shipment in 2006 will achieve 68 million and 97.4 million by 2007. The market scale of digital TV semiconductor in 2005 reached US $4.34 billion, and US $11.5 billion is expected to hit by the year of 2010. The market of digital TV set-top box (STB for short) is also huge, the shipment of which in 2005 was about 65 million, and the figure is expected to be 79 million by 2009.

There are about 5-7 main chips in each digital TV, including digital signal tuner, digital signal demodulator, MPEG decoder, back-end image processor and EMS memory.

The digital TV is mainly to reduce the RF with the central frequency at about 200-800MHz to IF with the central frequency at about 36MHz through the tuner after receiving the analog signals from TV stations through antenna. Then filter the unnecessary signals through Surface Acoustic Wave Filter.

Then the demodulator converts the analog signals to digital signals and reduces the signals to baseband signals with central frequency at 10MHz, which are absolutely digital signals here, the MPEG decoder converts these digital signals to analog signals, the analog signals here are still interlaced scanning signals which will become progressive scanning signals after the interpolation algorithm of back-end image processing.

For digital TV adopting American ATSC standard, the demodulator chips are rather troublesome because of the IEEE1394 and DVI or HDMI and demodulation of ATSC, in addition, the price is high. The IC component price of ATSC digital TV is about US $52, while the price of European DVB-T is about US $46 which is relatively lower.

The tuner is not an IC but a module, which is usually packaged by iron boxes and is so called radio frequency head. At the end of 2004, the silicon tuner was developed to substitute the iron box package, and the silicon tuner has now become the mainstream. In the key IC field of tuner, the industry concentration degree is not that high. The leading enterprise in the tuner IC field of DVB-T is Microtune, followed by Philips, Freescale and Conexant. In ATSC field, NxtWave (purchased by ATI with US $20 million) and Zenith (purchased by LG) are on the leading position. STMicroelectronics focuses on the STB (Set-top Box) and Broadcom focus on the Satellite TV.

The demodulator is the part with the highest technical contents. Some manufacturers encapsulate the tuner and demodulator chip into a single NIM module, but the individual demodulator is still the mainstream. The major manufacturers in the field include Intel, DiBcom, Philips and Afa Technology. Intel gained such technology through the purchasing of British Wireless Advanced Consumption Electronics Division of Zarlink in Canada. Intel has spent US 70 million for this acquisition, but the sales revenue of this division in 2005 fiscal year was only US 53 million. Intel is known as the leader of this field. DiBcom is a French manufacturer which is good at the demodulation of mobile DVB-T signals, i.e. the mobile phone TV DVB-H; DiBcom owns a couple of patents in the aspects of high-speed calculation, judgment structure of channels, Doppler compensation and so on. Most of these techniques are adopted in automobiles and with excellent signal receiving capacity when driving at high speed. The products not only have the advantage of low power consumption but also can receive the signals stably even at the speed of over 100 mi/h.

Afa Technology, established in Oct. 2002, is invested by the United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), the world second largest wafer foundry. The first generation DVB-T demodulator single-chips which was launched at the 1Q 2005 by Afa Technology have been widely adopted in the car TV, hand-held digital TV, digital STB, PC/NB USB digital TV receiver and so on. Till now, the shipment of the first generation DVB-T demodulator single-chip has achieved over one million. Afa Technology will enlarge its client foundation and enhance its leading position in the market through the mass production of second generation AF9013 and AF9015. In addition to a series of the DVB-T demodulator single-chip, Afa Technology has continuously developed the DVB-H demodulator single-chip for the portable devices such as mobile phones, which is expected to be introduced into the market in the 4Q 2006.

The MPEG decoder of the digital TV mainly refers to MPEG-2 decoder, in which the MPEG -- 4 and H.264 are to be added soon. The MPEG -- 2 decoder, in which digital TV are almost the same as the MPEG -- 2 decoders in DVD, yet digital TV can perform better with higher calculating speed and larger cache memory. At present most of the DVDs are designed in single-chip, while the MPEG -- 2 decoders of digital TV appear separately. The technical threshold of MPEG decoder chip is not high, and the key is to control the cost, while the key to cost control is the integration degree, STMicroelectronics does the best in this field and has developed the sample of 65 Nano meter MPEG -- 2 decoders.

STMicroelectronics, which introduced the world first MPEG-2 decoder chip in 1995, is the strongest enterprise in MPEG decoder field, its global shipment has gained the first place successively for 11 years from 1995 to 2006 , in 2005, its shipment was 62 million, and its accumulative shipment reached as many as 400 million. The company has 59% market shares in satellite TV, 58.5% in CATV, 69% in DTTB and 50% in IPTV. STMicroelectronics almost monopolizes the STB field with 60 million adopting STMicroelectronics chip in 2005. The market share of cable STB in China achieved 85% which is still increasing speedily.

There are very few individual MPEG-2 manufacturers, the integration of MPEG-2 decoders into the TV control IC tend to be the trends. The individual MPEG-2 decoder IC mainly focuses on STB market, the manufacturers in this field are STMicroelectronics, Zoran of USA, Fujitsu of Japanese, Cheertek and Sunplus of Taiwan, and Haier of China, most of which avoid direct encountering with STMicroelectronics. Fujitsu also takes STB market as its target market, although MPEG-2 chips of Fujitsu adopt the self-developed MCU, Fujitsu may suffer a loss; moreover, its R&D locates in China, yet the shipment is not high. Cheertek and Haier both regard China as the target market in which the competition is rather severe, the price decreases quickly and so does the performance. Sunplus engages in many fields but good at nothing. Its gross profit is on the low side among the IC design companies. Zoran concentrates on the DVD industry. Some Chinese companies such as HiSilicon and Magima also entered in this field, but they have to consider the market development and cost control carefully.

The zooming, on-screen display and audio editing of TV control IC (basically equal to back-end image processor) are of little technical content except the interlaced scanning technique and color processing technique, so almost all the Japanese manufacturers can self-develop the chip. But the Occident, Korean and Chinese manufacturers have to rely on chip providers, which mainly are Gnesis, Pixelworks, Trident, STMicroelectronics, Micronas, Toshiba, Philips, ATI and Morningstar. However, along with the development cost increasing of control IC, Even Sony outsourced the development projects to Trident, and that Gnesis, Pixelworks are all in the loss.

Topics Covered:

* Overview of digital TV

* Brief introduction to digital TV industry

* Research on digital TV tuner industry

* Research on tuner manufacturers

* Research on video decoder IC industry

* Research on digital TV control IC industry

* Digital video transmission interface

* Research on IC comprehensive manufacturers

* Research on Digital TV IC manufacturers in China

Companies Mentioned:

* Hangzhou Guoxin

* Magima Technology

* Fudan Micronano

* Legend Silicon

* HiSilicon Technologies

* Beijing Haier

For more information, visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c48661