IPTV, Cable Video Equipment Revenue Climbs in Q2: Report

Worldwide telco Internet protocol television – known as IPTV (News - Alert) – and cable video equipment revenue hit $1.2 billion in the second quarter of 2009, up 15 percent from the beginning of this year, according to an industry report released this week.

 

“Slow but steady IPTV and cable video subscriber growth in North America, Europe, and Asia, led by AT&T, Verizon, Belgacom, Swisscom (News - Alert), Telus, and KPN, helped boost the equipment market in the second quarter, particularly IP set-top boxes, middleware, and video content security software,” said Jeff Heynen, Infonetics Research’s directing analyst for broadband and video.

 

Heynen also predicts considerable merger and acquisition activity, based on the U.S. Court of Appeal rejection of the FCC ruling that would limit cable video providers from owning more than 30 percent of the video subscription market.

 

“This could pave the way for Comcast to pass the 30 percent threshold via a merger or acquisition. In a year where growth is hard to come by and corporate valuations are low, we think there could be significant M&A activity in North America in the second half of 2009,” he said.

 

Also according to Heynen, cable operators are investing heavily in video on demand infrastructure and hybrid IP/QAM set-top boxes to transition to a hybrid broadcast/unicast approach.

 

Other highlights of the report include:

 

·         The UK’s Virgin Media will be a trailblazer along these lines, opting to begin its transition to IPTV now, and aiming to serve roughly 13 million subscribers by 2012

 

·         Chinese cable companies, with roughly 170 million video customers at the end of 2008, are furiously upgrading their aging broadcast video networks to support digital video and other bidirectional capabilities

 

·         Revenue derived by service providers and cable companies for IPTV, cable video, and satellite video services is forecast to grow to $142 million in 2013 in North America

 

·         Motorola (News - Alert) leads in the fast growing IP set-top box market for worldwide revenue share.

 

As recently reported by TMCnet, the U.S. has shown significant growth in both broadband and IPTV adoption this year, but still follows China’s lead as the forerunner of global technology adoption. Further, consumer demand for IPTV seems to be driving the rollout of higher bandwidth options.

 

According to Heynen, Infonetics’ quarterly IPTV, cable video, and satellite video report provides worldwide and regional market share, market size, analysis, and forecasts through 2013 for telco IPTV and cable video equipment.

 

The report also tracks telco IPTV, cable video, and satellite video service provider revenue and subscribers. Equipment tracked includes: IP set-top boxes, VOD and streaming content servers, video encoders, IPTV middleware and content delivery platforms, video content protection software and edge QAMs.

Equipment manufacturers tracked in the report are as follows: ADB, Alcatel-Lucent, ARRIS, BitBand, Celrun, Cisco, Concurrent, Dasan Networks, Edgeware, Envivio, Ericsson, Espial, Harmonic, Huawei, Microsoft (News - Alert), Motorola, Netgem, Nokia Siemens, OptiBase, Pace, Sagem, SeaChange, Sumitomo, Tandberg TV, Thomson, Tilgin, UTStarcom, Yu-Xing, ZTE, and others.  Residential video and IPTV service revenue market share is provided for AT&T, Bell Canada (News - Alert), Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Dish, Shaw, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.