APRIL 18, 2006 - Digital media business models continue to proliferate, with direct impact on service providers and devices. Yet the requirement to protect digital video and music content is central to nearly every new proposition. Indeed, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is impacting key growth markets, from mobile video and music services, to IPTV, to high-definition DVDs.

iSuppli’s new research looks carefully at the convergence of DRM and Conditional Access (CA) across mobile and home entertainment platforms. The impact of DRM/CA is enormous and growing. Here are some extracts from the research:
• CA is already deployed to over 120 million pay-TV subscribers. By 2010, growth of IPTV, digital cable, DTH satellite and mobile TV will drive this number up to over 400M subscribers.
• The number of DRM-enabled platforms is exploding as well. Annual shipments of consumer electronics devices with DRM will surpass 1B units annually in 2009.
• Across broadband, mobile, pay TV and digital music services, CA and DRM protected nearly $4B in content revenue in 2005. But that pails next to the nearly $40B in protected premium digital multimedia revenue which will flow in 2010.
• The resulting opportunity for DRM/CA solutions will be worth over $4.5B in 2010.

Our forecasts point to strong opportunity. But nothing is certain about DRM. The market is full of complexity and competitive strategic positioning. Interoperability is still an enormous problem, propelled by the proliferation of proprietary DRMs. Industry-standard mobile DRM is stalled, with OMA DRM 2.0 continuing to face a mixed outlook while Microsoft DRM gains ground. Government regulation and legislation efforts are increasing. The landscape continues to evolve quickly as new announcements emerge nearly weekly.

DRM/CA trends underlie many market opportunities and challenges. iSuppli’s new report examines the cross-platform implications of DRM & CA: “Digital Rights Management & Conditional Access: Keys to the Digital Content Kingdom.” The report provides a content, operator, and platform perspective on DRM/CA. Each of the DRM/CA markets is covered across digital music and digital video, and across cable, satellite, IPTV, mobile, broadband, portable media players, and other mobile and TV platforms. In addition to covering key technology trends and examining and categorizing multiple DRM/CA initiatives, the report provides market sizing and forecasts by platform, distribution/operator channel, by geography, by DRM and CA segment, as well as market share.

Source: iSuppli (April 2006)