HD set-top box chip: strong involvement of local companies

With a number of local companies involved in the HD set-top box chip market, starting this year, the HD set-top box market will stage another game. But this time, local chip companies have clearly surpassed the SD era in terms of timing, technology, and market experience as well as layout strategies.

High-definition led the second "full turn"

This year, China's HD set-top box shipments will exceed 8.6 million units.

"High-definition set-top boxes will certainly have a rapid development in the past one or two years." Gao Weidong, deputy general manager of China Marketing Co., Ltd. of Changhong Network Technology Co., Ltd. told the "China Electronics News" reporter. Because, at present, the high-definition content that has been dropped across the country has increased significantly. The bottleneck of high-definition content has been broken. The price of high-definition flat-panel TVs has dropped significantly. With the advancement of triple-play, the two-way network is being enhanced everywhere, and high-definition set-top boxes will be popularized.

According to the statistics of market research agency Gran Research, as of the end of 2010, China's cable HD set-top box shipments reached 3.006 million units. This year, cities such as municipalities, coastal cities, and provincial capitals, which are more economically developed, use high-definition interactive set-top boxes to carry out secondary reorganization (overall transfer), promote new services through high-definition interactive set-top boxes, and increase user ARPU. Driven by the high-definition secondary rotation, Gran Research expects that by the end of 2011, China's cable high-definition set-top box market shipments are expected to exceed 860 million units.

Local chips are involved in the HD market. Local chip companies are not inferior to high-definition chips.

In the high-definition set-top box chip market, some foreign companies were the first to provide technical solutions. Since the beginning of last year, some local chip companies have also been involved in the high-definition market. At present, we can see that there are core products, Hass, Hangzhou International, and Shanghai Huaya Micro. Among them, the core company that first introduced high-definition products, its focus is on the Brazilian market. The performance and functions of the products are designed for the Brazilian market. For example, products do not require CA and do not require data broadcasting. Therefore, the performance of the chips is not high. And Hass, Hangzhou Guoxin and Shanghai Huaya Micro are the main players in the domestic market.

In addition to these companies, from the second half of this year to the first half of next year, there will be a large number of high-definition set-top box chips of local chip companies intensively listed, thus setting off a “local chip high-definition fever” in the market. For example, the high-definition products of ChinaTek Link will be streamed in June and July of this year, and HD products of Haier IC are being tested.

From the performance point of view, the high-definition chip products launched by local companies are not inferior. According to the reporter’s understanding, the performance of some foreign chips currently being promoted in the Chinese market is actually not high, and some representative products are only clocked at around 300 MHz. The products recently launched by local manufacturers are faster in frequency, more powerful in multimedia playback functions, support more TV functions, have Internet access, and support the standard AVS of independent intellectual property rights, which is more in line with the needs of the Chinese market.

First consider functions and performance on local chips, not just price, but also function and performance.

When it comes to local chips, set-top box companies are no longer just talking about product costs. "The chip is the energy that drives the development of terminal products." Gu Hongchun, assistant to general manager of Jiangsu Yinhe Electronics Co., Ltd., said, "As high-end market as high-definition, although the price is an important factor, sometimes it is not just price, but also depends on the chip New features, performance enhancements, etc.” He further stated that the mainstream HD set-top box chips must have interactive features, can support open operating systems such as Linux and Andriod, support future 3D TVs, support hard disk recording capabilities, and future triple play. Applications need coding technology, VoIP technology, etc. "Currently, domestic chips already have some of these features," he said.

In the final contest, it will depend on costs.

With the involvement of local chip manufacturers, by the second half of this year, there will be no less than 10 HD set-top box chip suppliers in the entire market. However, judging from past survival rules, in the course of competition, due to technical problems, some companies may have problems due to cost. Some companies may eventually survive due to market strategy problems in the same market. Three or four homes. In the final remaining three or four companies, the boss is generally more comfortable, the third is very painful, and the fourth may be destroyed at any time.

At the same time, chip manufacturers have increased their competitiveness by providing complete solutions, which has led to an increasing burden on chip companies, and the value-added services provided by chip companies have not been rewarded for sales of complete products. Therefore, how to find a win-win and win-win business model for chip developers, machine manufacturers, and operators is a place that the industry needs to seriously reflect on.

Related Links Zhang Ming, Deputy General Manager of Hangzhou Guoxin Co., Ltd. The business model for domestic cities The typical model for SD implementation in China's cities is the operator's customized set-top box, which is distributed to users free of charge. Due to the slow return on monthly fees and the single means, the purchase cost of set-top boxes is kept as low as possible, and the set-top box manufacturers shift this cost pressure to the upstream chip manufacturers. Finally, operators, set-top box manufacturers, and chip companies are all unprofitable. The damage to the digital TV industry chain is the enthusiasm of the entire industry chain. Therefore, the development of high-definition markets must have innovative business models.

The multi-functional high-definition interaction is the key point in the domestic development stage. Operators including Gehua, Huadian, etc. have already found a basic business model. Although the brand-new business model of TV Internet is still in an active exploration process compared with the mobile Internet win-win model represented by iPhone, HD set-top boxes have laid a very good realistic foundation for future innovative business models.

Liu Qiang, general manager of Changhong Network Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on customer satisfaction. In terms of high-definition value-added services, everyone is still exploring. Customer satisfaction is the key. After achieving high-definition two-way, Hangzhou Huada launched value-added services such as on-demand. The progress of these value-added services has attracted great attention in the industry, and many places are learning and learning from it.

In particular, after the operators have unified plans and unified deployments, they will not be as quick-money as they used to. Instead, they will consider it comprehensively and pay more attention to user satisfaction. For example, after replacing the ordinary set-top box with a high-definition two-way set-top box in Beijing, the Beijing area did not increase the viewing fee after adding many new features and services; after HDTV users reached two or three million, they would appropriately provide users with new features. With some fees, users can understand that the early investment may be quickly recovered.

Under the guidance of this operational concept, operators, terminal manufacturers, technology providers and consumers can achieve harmony and balance, and ultimately achieve a multi-win-win situation and benign development.