Operators perceive Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) as "the overall top IP set-top box supplier," supplanting last year's leader, Motorola (now part of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), of course), according to a survey released Monday by global communications market-research firm Infonetics Research.
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The most important IP-based applications for purchasing IP STBs. Click here to enlarge. |
Infonetics' Hybrid IP Set-Top Box Features and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey showed: "Cisco has led in global IP STB revenue share for four straight quarters" demonstrating the company's "efforts over the past year to expand its IP set-top box lineup and customer base," Jeff Heynen, Infonetics' directing analyst for broadband access and video, said in a news release.
Heynen added the leadership position showed that "the major contracts (Cisco) has scored with AT&T (NYSE: T), Deutsche Telekom (XETRA: DTE.DE) and Telus (Toronto: T.TO) are paying off."
While Cisco is perceived as the top box, the company that acquired Scientific-Atlanta is tied with Motorola, the company acquired by Google, for having the most installed set-top boxes among carriers. Amino Technologies (LSE: AMO.L) came in third place. Surprisingly, again, Pace (LSE:PIC.L) was not mentioned.
According to Infonetics, 94 percent of service providers who participated in the survey use IP set-tops to deliver video services. Those surveyed viewed video-on-demand, he electronic program guide and whole home DVR as "the top three critical IP STB applications" and said that social network capabilities "were not highly rated," Infonetics pointed out.
Not surprisingly, Ethernet was the leading way to connect set-tops to home networks and shared media with other devices, falling ahead of 802.11n WiFi and universal plug-and-play.
Thin client boxes, too, took a back seat as increased high definition programming and time-shifted viewing placed "greater storage burdens" on the boxes. Seventy-one percent of operators in the survey said they'll need more than 500 gigs of hard drive capacity as early as next year.
For more:
- see the Infonetics release
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