AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 92 - (Page 26)

The broadcast industry market Dick Hobbs has been around the broadcast industry for many years. In all that time he’s never had a real feeling for how large a business it is. Now, for the first time ever, he has a study which puts real numbers on the table. He’s been reading the report with interest. he IABM – the body which represents broadcasting manufacturers and media technology companies worldwide – commissioned new research from Screen Digest, the leading mediafocussed research consultancy. Together, the two organisations approached the manufacturers and suppliers and developed a programme to scale the industry. The key to getting results that everyone could trust and rely on was to get detailed information on as many suppliers as possible. Co-operation from the industry was vital: the best way to get accurate numbers on products and market segments was from the suppliers themselves. With the authority of the IABM behind it, and of course with a cast-iron confidentiality agreement, Screen Digest was able to persuade many manufacturers to give them extremely detailed information. Senior analyst on the project for Screen Digest was Robert Ambrose. “We had tremendous support and co-operation from dozens of companies in the industry, from the largest to the smallest, and in all regions of the world,” says Ambrose. “This is a clear sign that the broadcast technology industry is increasingly willing to work together to address the challenges and opportunities ahead.” With this information from the manufacturers themselves, plus data gleaned from published sources and Screen Digest’s other research work, they were able to put a figure on the size of the business. T looks set to expand. Within each segment the study defined sub-segments, and within those product groups. For example, the size of the lens market was measured within the camera accessories sub-segment within the acquisition segment. Lenses, incidentally, are worth $180 million a year. Broadcast market growing Screen Digest aimed to collect historical data from suppliers, and used its future market projections to consider how the industry might grow in the near future. Across the industry, worldwide, that business growth is predicted to be 11.4% year on year to 2010. Tied in with that growth prediction is the acknowledgement that unit prices are falling in many areas. We are probably all aware that we can get a lot more for our money now than we did in the past. New entrants and new technologies have probably halved the price for ENG cameras over the last couple of years, for example or at least the list price . So if prices are falling and overall sales are growing, that means manufacturers are selling more units. That makes sense: new channels and new broadcast services are springing up all around us. Another source of growth is that more activities are coming within the broadcast sphere. Whereas conferences and events, or distance learning, might once have been content with lower quality, industrial video, now broadcast quality digital products are affordable and demanded for the impact they can give. HD is now a regular requirement for conferences, concerts and even places of worship. You might think that some of this growth is being driven by consolidation in the industry. Big players like Harris and Grass Valley seem to have been on a spending spree over the last couple of years, moving into new areas by acquiring other companies. Are the big boys dominating the industry? One of the facts I found most interesting in this study is the vast spread of sizes of companies supplying it. The top eight manufacturers account for 45% of total revenues, which is probably a lower Dick Hobbs is a well known journalist specialising in the broadcast industry. This article has been commissioned jointly by AV Specialist and the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers. The full report – The Broadcast and Media Technology Business – runs to more than 200 pages. Details can be found at www.theiabm.org. In our next issue Dick will look at what the report has to say about emerging technologies, including IPTV and mobile television. If you want to comment or question this article, contact Dick Hobbs at dick@hobbsonline.tv $11.6 billion industry The headline figure is that the broadcast industry is worth around $11.6 billion at 2006 prices. Of that, $544 million a little under 5% is retained in the sales channels with the rest going to manufacturers and service providers. What is included in the broadcast industry within that total? All the equipment required to create, manage and deliver content is included; consumer equipment, general purpose equipment and systems belonging to other industries was excluded. So, for example, consumer receivers and set-top boxes are not part of this survey. Cable and IPTV headends are included, of course, but the telecommunications infrastructure to carry it to the home is not part of the “broadcast industry”. Computers and IT systems have been carefully considered. Obviously desktop editing and special-purpose software like playout automation or newsrooms are broadcast equipment. Business systems like scheduling and asset management are counted but general office systems like word processing and spreadsheets are not. So what IABM has come up with is a reasonable definition of the business, and a figure for how much each part of it is worth. The study divides the industry into 10 segments, ranging from the massive – playout and delivery platforms, which includes headends and transmitters and is worth $3.6 billion – to the relatively modest DRM, DAM and library management which as yet is worth just over $100 million, but 26 http://www.theiabm.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 92

Larger than life
Mediatech Aftrica shines bright in local market
HD camcorder runs with the wild dogs
Divers Down pursues tapeless workflow
Broadcast industy feedback

AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 92