Enthusiasm is still building around the nascent MPEG-4 AVC market, but the use of advanced video decoders does not mean that MPEG-2-only decoders will disappear from the market soon, reports In-Stat. In fact, MPEG-2 unit shipments are expected to experience growth until 2009, though declining ASPs for MPEG-2 solutions will cause revenues to decline, the high-tech market research firm says. "Buzz is really all there is to MPEG-4 AVC currently," says Michelle Abraham, In-Stat analyst. "We expect the market will be small in 2005, as many decoder IC suppliers have been conducting interoperability testing with encoder suppliers. We expect widespread availability of MPEG-4 AVC decoder ICs beginning in 2006." The worldwide MPEG Video IC market revenues for 2004 were US$ 3.8 billion. MPEG-4 Video ICs will appear in more and more mobile handsets as mobile video delivery systems based on standards like DVB-H and DMB are deployed around the world. In the MPEG-2 consumer encoder IC market, NEC Electronics had the top unit share in 2004 for the second year in a row, mainly due to its design wins in DVD recorders. STMicroelectronics had the highest MPEG Video IC revenue again in 2004, for the fifth straight year.
What was once a simple, unidirectional flow of electricity from centralized power plants to passive consumers is evolving into a complex, intelligent network where millions of distributed resources actively participate in grid operations. This transformation, powered by smart grid technologies, represents one of the most significant infrastructure shifts of our time. It promises to reshape how we generate, distribute, and consume energy. At its core, the smart grid represents far more than mere digitization of existing infrastructure. This bi-directional capability is fundamental to understanding why smart grids are becoming the backbone of modern energy systems, facilitating everything from real-time demand response to the integration of renewable energy sources. Smart Grid Market Development By 2030, smart grid technologies are projected to cover nearly half of the global electrical grid, up dramatically from just 24 percent in 2025. This expansion is underpinned by explosive gr...