Revenue for Media and Entertainment Storage to Increase 1.7X from 2011 Through 2016

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the 2011 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report report to their offering.

This report (Jan 2011, 159 pages) is the ninth report on data storage and emerging applications and the seventh report on data storage and the entertainment and media market published by Coughlin Associates.

Data storage is a key element in the digital transformation of content creation, editing, distribution and reception. Data capacity increases, form factors, lowered product prices and the growing familiarity with digital editing, digital intermediates and various forms of digital distribution are key components in the continued growth and development of entertainment.

Because of the large file sizes required for high resolution and stereoscopic images there is increasing demand for high capacity storage devices to support resulting large video files. The entire content value chain of content creation, editing, archiving, distribution as well as consumer electronics content reception devices provide an overall accelerating feed-forward mechanism.

This drives growth in data storage for entertainment content applications. For many archiving and distribution applications where content is relatively static low cost/high capacity ATA storage, optical disks and tape-based storage libraries will predominate. Hard disk drives as well as enterprise SSDs are also used in high performance storage applications where storage costs must be combined with performance enhancement.

For applications requiring rugged field use or fast playback response flash memory either as cards or SSDs are becoming more popular. Due to input form from industry groups, SMPTE survey results and discussions with industry end users and equipment providers we have adjusted historical model data.

Data back to 2008 is shown in this report to help past report clients in interpreting the new data. Some areas have gained in capacity and revenue while some have declined vs. earlier editions of this report.

Key Points

• Creation, Distribution & Conversion of video content creates a huge demand driver for storage device manufacturers
• As image resolution increases and as stereoscopic video becomes more common, storage requirements explode
• The development of HD TV and other high resolution venues in the home and in mobile devices will drive the demand for digital content
• Active archiving will drive increased use of HDD storage for archiving applications, supplementing tape for long term archives
• Flash memory will find wider use in cameras and content distribution
• Between 2011 and 2016 we expect the media and entertainment industry will see about a 7.7X increase in the required digital storage capacity and about a 5.6X growth in storage capacity shipments per year (from 11,248 PB to 62,736 PB)
• Total revenue for media and entertainment storage systems will increase about 1.7X from 2011 through 2016 ($3.8 B to $6.4 B)
• About 57% of the total storage capacity will be used for content archiving and preservation in 2011. We believe that this will increase to 60% of total capacity by 2016 due to more efficient and cost effective conversion services, lower overall storage costs and a greater ROI on long tail content
• In 2011 we estimate that about 43.6% of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape with about 39.1% HDD, 17.1% optical and 0.2% flash memory (mostly in digital cameras and some media distribution servers)
• By 2016 tape units will decline to 39.1%, HDDs increase to 60%, optical decline to 0.6% and flash increasing in percentage to 0.3%
• Total revenue for storage media and devices will increase about 1.6X from 2011 through 2016 ($485 M to $760 M)
• The single biggest application (by storage capacity) for digital storage in the next several years as well as one of the most challenging is the digital conversion of film, video tape and other analog formats
• Over 61 Exabytes of digital storage will be used for digital archiving and content conversion and preservation by 2015
• Content distribution systems will drive the growth of network and direct attached/local storage in the projection period.
• Digital cinema is experiencing considerable growth, driven by the popularity of 3D content
• There is a pressing need to develop policies and procedures for format conversion to combat format obsolescence
• Several petabytes of storage may be required for a complete stereoscopic digital movie production at 4K resolution and there is some production work as high as 8K
• Non-linear editing requires high performance storage devices. Over the forecast period lower network storage costs and higher performing low cost storage networks will result in faster growth of network storage than direct attached and local.
• ATA HDD arrays are becoming the dominant mode for readily retrievable fixed content storage.
• Magnetic tape will remain as an archival media although use in other applications is in decline, particularly content capture
• Digital cameras using optical media, flash memory, and hard disk drives will gain momentum over traditional video tape
• The storage industry experienced some softness in storage demand growth since the 2008 recession but the continued need to storage for higher performance and high capacity workflows are driving strong storage growth in the projection periods.

The data presented in this report is subject to change as the content storage market develops.