Advanced Television

Cable STBs buck usual Q1 drop

July 4, 2013

Market research firm Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its Q1 2013 Set-Top Boxes and Pay TV Subscribers market share and forecast report, which tracks IP, cable, satellite and DTT STBs and OTT media servers.

“Cable STBs bucked the seasonal trend in the first quarter of 2013, notching modest gains in both revenue and shipments,” reports Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research. “China and India remain strong and growing markets for low-end digital STBs, while Latin America continues to ramp. Meanwhile, North America also grew, thanks to increasing shipments of video gateways and clients.”

Report highlights include:

  • The global set-top box market—IP, cable, satellite and DTT STBs, and OTT media servers—totaled $4.4 billion in Q1 2013, a decline of 5 per cent from Q4 2012
  • Only cable STBs and OTT media servers gained on a sequential basis in Q1 2013
  • 56 per cent of STBs shipped in 1Q13 were basic standard definition boxes, pointing to a larger shipment mix to emerging markets like China and India, where the focus is on digitisation rather than advanced services
  • Putting up its biggest quarter on record in Q1 2013, Cisco extends its worldwide STB revenue share lead
  • China Telecom just released a new tender for smart IP STBs for its growing  IPTV services in Shanghai and Guangdong, and it is expected this will lead to an increase in IP STB shipments later this year
  • Infonetics forecasts telco IPTV subscribers to grow at a 17 per cent compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2017, the highest of any subscriber category

 

Categories: Articles, Equipment, In Home, Markets, Research, STB