MPEG Chip Revenue to Double By 2005

The chip business has been feeling the pain in this slowing economy. If people opt not to buy the products the silicon is embedded in the little gadgets just sit on the shelf or don't get produced at all. However, according to a report from Cahners In-Stat Group , while the MPEG video chip market will only see a 3% shipment growth this year, for the period spanning 2000 and 2005, worldwide revenue for MPEG video chips will double from $1.6 billion to $3.3 billion with unit shipments growing to 281 million. According to the report, ST Microelectronics had the highest MPEG video chip revenue for the third year in a row. In 2000, the company's MPEG-2 decoder for DBS set top box unit shipments put ST at number one in unit share as well. The 1999 unit share winner, ESS Technology, was second in unit share in 2000 and C-Cube came in second in revenue share with 17 percent and third in unit share with 19 percent. In-Stat also says that revenue growth in the MPEG chip industry will be negative this year (surprise, surprise), set top boxes will continue to consume gads of MPEG video chips, and consumer MPEG-2 encoders will grow from less than 1% of the market in 2000 to 11 percent in 2005. Now where are all the streaming video services we've been waiting for?