The CA market comprises two main sources of revenue, one derived from operators in smartcard and integration fees, and one from the devices through licenses. The market has grown in line with the digital set-top box market, quadrupling between 2000 and 2009 to reach $1.5bn per annum. As the installed base of boxes flattens out towards 2015, smartcards, accounting for over 90 per cent of revenue, will stabilise between $1.7-1.8bn.

Within this market, NDS currently account for just over a third of sales, expected to be peaking with current customer base during 2011. This is in line with their total revenue, which is up to $957m in fiscal 2011, rising from $850m in 2008. Of this, IHS Screen Digest expects that around $665m will be generated from the CA market in 2011, including smartcard, integration and licensing revenue, accounting for 35 per cent of the global market. The software business, while currently quite small, is showing regular growth of about 7 per cent. Further expansion could come from several sources: transmission middleware; applications (including DVR and EPG); advanced services (including targeted advertising and recommendation engines); and multiscreen TV. NDS are the current market leader in transmission middleware, active on 22 per cent of set-top boxes installed and reported sales of 28m new devices for EPG and DVR applications in 2011, compared to 43m new transmission middleware devices.

Where NDS has developed some serious traction is where pay TV operators have started to offer content to multiple devices. NDS is currently deployed with Cox, DirecTV and BSkyB, making up 7 per cent of multiscreen device implementations, compared to market leader Microsoft at 64 per cent. As a proportion of total devices used to reach consumers, the world outside of set-top boxes represents a serious opportunity for NDS as much as it is a challenge for pay TV operators. The implementation of these products into the market will determine much of the growth opportunity over the next five years.