Study: Modest Growth for Conditional Access
In 2008, conditional access technologies earned revenue of nearly $1.3 billion worldwide and will continue to grow, adding nearly $105 million more in annual revenue by 2014, according to ABI Research’s study "Conditional Access and Content Security for Pay TV Markets." Cable generated the bulk of the revenue, followed by satellite and telco. This can be largely attributed to new deployments in the cable market and the momentum this segment has gained in regions other than North America where cable and satellite are mature markets.
Other drivers include demand for secure high-definition content, and the ability to share content across multiple devices in a "connected" home.
While overall revenue shows a modest increase over the study’s forecast period, the major changes are expected to be in the revenue share contributed by each of the three platforms, cable, satellite and telco TV. While the former two indicate slight, fluctuating growth, telco TV is forecast to show approximately a 15 percent increase to 2014.
Some other factors may tend to inhibit the CA market, including excessive government regulation, lack of compatibility between platforms, and consumers’ growing assumption that online content should be free.