The worldwide retail value of all Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) Set Top Boxes (STBs) will "blast off" during 2006, and power drive up to more than $10 Billion during 2009, reports In-Stat. In a surprising twist, Australia currently leads the world for consumption of High Definition TV (HDTV) Digital Terrestrial Set Top boxes, with North America running in second place. Europe has been the unit shipment and market value leader for several years, and is poised to become the long-term dominating force if the 2006 World Cup Football matches drive strong uptake for new Digital Terrestrial products. Japan and China have emerging markets for DTT STBs that support High Definition. The study also found a greater number of countries are turning on local Digital Terrestrial TV broadcasts, and this trend is beginning to accelerate. In the U.S., US Digital TV (USDTV) is tying together the bit streams of up to six local Digital Terrestrial TV stations, and offering a low-cost alternative to Cable TV services. The next phase of development is focused on advanced set top boxes that support new video Coder/Decoders (Codecs) and include hard disk drives and support for PVRs. China is expected to turn on their local Digital Terrestrial TV services during 2007, and this will drive large unit shipments of entry-level HDTV set top boxes in 2008 and 2009.
Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....