Digital Home Sets Getting Closer to Common Chinese Consumers

BEIJING, April 13 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong, forecasts that digital home sets will get closer to Chinese consumers in 2007.

The year 2006 was an extremely important year for the development of digital homes in China. A series of major events in the fields of policy environment, development of standards and technological evolution are producing a profound impact on the future development of digital homes in China. The digital home is now gradually entering consumers' lives. Shanghai Telecom was the first to pilot digital home services among 5,000 ADSL users. CCID Consulting's research report shows:

Digital home users rapidly expand in numbers, while products grow fast

CCID Consulting's statistics show that by 2006, digital home users in China had reached 13.726 million. These included cable digital TV users, IPTV users and intelligent home users. Compared with 2005, the overall number of users grew by 244.8%.

For Fig. 1, "Number of Digital Home Users and its Growth in China, 2004-2006", please refer to http://www.ccidconsulting.com/upload/11426.gif .*

In 2006, the overall conversion to digital TV gathered pace. The structure of cable network operators underwent a period of transformation as former city-centered cable TV network companies started to integrate towards provincial networks in an effort to improve the regional competitiveness of their cable TV networks. With the introduction of several digital TV standards in 2006, the whole industry was placed under a clearer development direction and entered a period of fast growth. Industry cooperation and service innovations have provided a powerful driving force for the development of IPTV. Although intelligent homes are still in a starting stage, the overall market will gradually enter a stage of industry integration, while products will develop along the practical, convenient and modular lines, eventually made suitable for common consumers.

Entry thresholds in some links are low, while there are still development bottlenecks

The digital home industry chain mainly consists of chip, OS and other core component firms, whole system firms, content providers, network operators and end users. Among these 4 major areas, core component suppliers and operators have obvious industry monopoly and the entry threshold is rather high. Relatively speaking, whole terminal system firms and contents providers are distributed in a wide range of industries, and the entry threshold is rather low. Particularly in the whole terminal firm link, leading color TV and PC makers have relatively mature technologies. It will not be too difficult for them to grasp future customer demand, connect with the upstream and downstream links and introduce some products to attract attention from consumers.

For Fig. 2, "Simplified Diagram of the Digital Home Industry Chain", please refer to http://www.ccidconsulting.com/upload/11427.gif .*

Currently, there are 3 major development bottlenecks for digital homes in China: non-unified standards, high cost and low customer cognition. The biggest problem in the promotion of digital homes is lack of unified industry standards. All standard alliances and their member firms have their own strategic intentions and starting points. To a certain extent, too many industry standards hamper the further development of the industry. Currently, the overall price of digital home products is still very high. In a price-sensitive consumer electronics market, high prices are not good for products to achieve a high penetration rate. Many consumers are not very receptive or enthusiastic about digital homes. The different concepts introduced by vendors in their promotion have made consumers have an ambiguous understanding.

The digital home industry will gradually mature, while competition will intensify

CCID Consulting believes that as consumers are more receptive to digital homes and product prices gradually drop, the digital home BOX will become the backbone of digital homes. Based on the current digital home development in China, CCID Consulting makes the following forecast for the growth of digital home user numbers in the next 5 years:

Table: Forecast for Digital Home User Numbers in China, 2007-2011

Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Number of

Users (10,000) 4081.6 6775.1 8909.6 10630.9 11891.4

Growth Rate 197.36% 65.99% 31.51% 19.32% 11.86%

Source: CCID Consulting, Jan. 07

For Fig. 3, "Forecast for Number of Digital Home Users and Growth in China, 2007-2011", please refer to http://www.ccidconsulting.com/upload/11428.gif .*

Digital homes will have the following development trends in the future:

1. PC and TV to be integrated into one body

Future digital homes will see a digital home BOX which integrates PC and TV terminals into one unit. BOX products also possess computing and processing capacities and large-screen display equipment. The BOX will be able to carry out multimedia information processing, network (TV and IP) access and intelligent home control. Its display technology will also meet the demand for home digital entertainment. Moreover, as the market is more receptive to the digital home BOX, and as product prices gradually drop, the digital home BOX will become the main part of the core of digital homes.

2. HD, wireless and energy-saving technologies to become the main trend

The development of digital home products will produce a major impact on technological succession. From the current situation, HD, wireless and energy-saving will be the main 3 product technology trends in the next few years.

3. Competitions between the 2 major standards will gradually intensify

With the acceleration of 3C integration, the boundaries between the 3 major modules of digital home will gradually be blurred. The boundaries between office-oriented IGRS and family-focused ITopHome are also bound to be broken. In order to become the digital home standard at home and abroad, competitions between the two camps will gradually intensify. Networking, standardization, intelligence, collaboration and remote control will be important features of digital homes in the future.

*Source: CCID Consulting, Jan. 07

About CCID Consulting

CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. (also known as CCID Consulting), the first Chinese consulting firm listed in the Growth Enterprise Market of the Stock Exchange (GEM) of Hong Kong (stock code: HK08235), is a direct affiliate of the China Center for Information Industry Development (hereinafter known as CCID Group). Headquartered in Beijing, CCID Consulting has so far set up branch offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Harbin, with over 300 professional consultants and industry experts. The Company's business scope has covered over 200 large- and medium-sized cities in China. Apart from home market development, CCID Consulting is establishing international cooperation links across the United States, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, by setting up agents in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Italy and Russia, with the aim of going global.

Based on four major competitive areas of the powerful data channels, industrial resources, intense knowledge and deep understanding of information technology, CCID Consulting provides customers with consulting, research and IT outsourcing services covering strategy planning, IT application, marketing strategy, human resources and information technology outsourcing. Our customers range from industrial users in IT, telecommunications, energy, finance, automobile, to government departments at all levels and diversified industrial parks.

CCID Consulting is committed to becoming the No. 1 brand for strategy consulting, the No. 1 consultant for enterprise management and the No. 1 expert in market research. For more information, please visit our website at http://en.ccidconsulting.com/ .