El Segundo, Calif. – The reason video stores have gone the way of the Fotomat can be seen in IHS’ report stating that about 1.7 billion devices will ship this year capable of streaming over the Internet video.
The research firm said shipments of set-top boxes, Smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, Apple TV and Roku type devices that can stream content from the likes of Netflix and Hulu will increase 20 percent over the 1.4 billion shipped in 2012. The industry will sustain this growth rate in 2014 when it jumps another 20 percent 2.67 billion billion devices shipping by 2017.
The content is referred to as Over The Top (OTT) as it comes in a separate data stream from an outside source on top of the device’s regular data connection that is supplied by the ISP, IHS said.
