Although particularly popular in consumer electronic devices, HDMI connections are starting to appear increasingly in PCs as well, particularly in notebooks.
According to In-Stat's 'DVI & HDMI 2009: DVI Declines Gradually While HDMI Rises Sharply' report. HDMI doubled its penetration in the PC market from 6.1 per cent in 2007 to 12.3 per cent in 2008, and its use has also grown by 76 per cent in mobile devices over the same period.
This trend is expected to continue, with HDMI-enabled product shipments predicted to grow at an annual rate of 20.3 per cent through 2013.
"HDMI's success continues to be led by the consumer electronics (CE) segment," says Brian O'Rourke, an analyst at In-Stat.
"HDMI has been adopted nearly universally in digital televisions, which account for the single largest HDMI application. The next big HDMI growth area is in portable CE devices, including digital camcorders, digital still cameras and portable media players. Vendors hope to drive adoption of HDMI into mobile phones, where the more than one billion annual shipments are a tempting target."
The research also reveals that this growing adoption ties into the gradual decline of the use of DVI, predicting that DVI-enabled product shipments will decrease at an annual rate of 8.1 per cent through to 2013.
The success of HDMI can be attributed to its smaller and simpler form factor and its ability to carry audio signals as well as high definition video. Content providers will also be pleased as HDMI signals also conform to the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) specification, enabling them to add another link in the DRM lock down chain.
The research concludes that the adoption of HDMI will be further enhanced by the development of smaller connectors such as mini-HDMI and micro-HDMI to make the standard more attractive to mobile device makers.