LTE-Advanced networks have been actively deployed around the world. At the end of 2014, LTE-Advanced covered its first 100 million people worldwide, just 4 years since the network’s inception. ABI Research predicts that the coverage will reach 1 billion in 4 more years.

“As heavy subscribers’ data traffic growth has exploded, ABI Research anticipates fierce competition for more spectrum, as well as an active migration to VoLTE and higher data modulation schemes such as LTE and LTE-Advanced, which has higher spectral efficiency”

The worldwide pay-TV market is expected to grow 5% in 2014, surpassing 924.4 million subscribers. “IPTV is expected to grow a market leading 14% in 2014, followed by satellite TV platform at 7%. The growth rates of cable and terrestrial TV platforms are expected to slow to around 3%,” comments Jake Saunders, VP and Practice Director of Core Forecasting at ABI Research.

Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014. Global mobile data traffic reached 2.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2014, up from 1.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2013 according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2014 to 2019.

Last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 30 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. One exabyte of traffic traversed the global Internet in 2000, and in 2014 mobile networks carried nearly 30 exabytes of traffic.

NSR’s Energy Markets via Satellite, 5th Edition report finds that although near-term challenges exist for some segments of the Energy market, the long term opportunities remain strong.  At over US$ 3.8 Billion in retail revenues split between Oil & Gas, Mining, and Utility Markets by 2024 - new capacity, terminal form factors, and the ever-increasing focus on improving productivity of remote operations will drive demand for satellite communications across the Energy Sector.  

By Q1 2017, 40 percent of U.S. Internet homes will have a streaming media player, bringing the total number of homes with these devices to 39 million, according to the new NPD Connected Intelligence Connected Home Forecast.  At the beginning of 2014 (Q1) only 16 percent of U.S. Internet homes had a streaming media player. Ownership is on track to climb to nearly one-quarter of homes, 24 percent, by Q1 2015 when consumers report device ownership that takes into account their holiday purchases.

Smart home and IoT research from Parks Associates finds ownership and usage of connected devices is growing among U.S. broadband households.  Among its findings include that  26% own a streaming media device.

Other findings include:

The Latin American Video on Demand (VOD) Over the Top  (OTT) market reached  5.54 million paying subscribers in 2014. Dataxis estimates that, by 2018, the Latin American VOD OTT market will record a total of 16.25 million operational pay accounts.

In turn, the T-VOD market will record 135.47 million pay transactions in 2014 and this figure will rise to 646.31 million by 2018.

As the technology world converges at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a forward-thinking Irdeto global research survey finds that consumers expect to be using a mixture of a la carte Internet TV and pay TV services by 2020 as they search for the optimal viewing experience. The research revealed that only 18% of consumers in the US are expecting to watch most content through pay TV services versus 21% of UK consumers and 27% of US consumers expecting to watch most content through Internet TV services like Netflix or Amazon Prime versus 11% in the UK.

The Small Unmanned Arial Systems (sUAS) market will surpass US$8.4 billion by 2018 according to new research published by ABI Research entitled Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) Solutions Ecosystem. By 2019 the Commercial sector will dominate the overall sUAS market with revenues exceeding US$5.1 billion (51% 2014 to 2019 CAGR), roughly 5 times larger than the Prosumer/Hobby market, and 2.3 times greater than the Military/Civil market segment.

After a year of weak growth for the LCD TV industry in 2013, worldwide shipment growth has accelerated every quarter in 2014, with total units rising more than 10% in Q3’14. The latest Quarterly Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report from DisplaySearch, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), has raised the global forecast for 2014 LCD TV shipments to 223 million units, up 7% Y/Y on a unit basis and up 16% Y/Y on an area basis.