Telecom Lead Asia: Huawei leads the global VOD server
market in both Q4 2011 and in 2011. Motorola and ZTE are neck-and-neck for
global VOD revenue in Q4 2011.
The video infrastructure market including VOD and
streaming content servers and video encoders posted 6 percent growth in 2011 to
$803 million, as all major world regions except EMEA increased spending.
Infonetics forecasts double-digit percent revenue
increases in the global video infrastructure market in 2012.
A cumulative $1.9 billion will be spent on standard and
high definition (SD and HD) MPEG-4 video encoders over the next 5 years, from
2012 to 2016.
Two of the most interesting trends in the video
equipment and set-top box markets are 1) across the board, pay TV operators
continue to increase their investments in MPEG-4 encoders to reduce bandwidth
requirements for their broadcast channels and VOD streams, and 2) despite
healthy STB unit growth in 2011, revenue was nearly flat, reflecting the growth
of lower-cost STBs in emerging markets, particularly China, combined with the
increased competition we’re seeing in the more mature markets,” said Jeff
Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics
Research.
In 2011, worldwide set-top box unit shipments increased
13.7 percent compared to the previous year, while revenue was nearly flat, up
less than 1 percent, to $13.3 billion.
Global set-top box unit shipments grew faster (+6.0
percent) than revenue (+3.8) between the third and fourth quarters of 2011.
Decent growth in high definition (HD) and DVR STB sales
helped keep average selling prices (ASPs) from declining too quickly.
In the overall global STB revenue share, Motorola,
Echostar, Pace and Cisco lead, all separated by only a few market share
percentage points in Q4 2011.
IP STB and hybrid IP/DTT STB unit shipments are forecast
to grow the strongest among the various types of set-top boxes over the next 5
years, increasing their share of the total market.
Demand continues to accelerate for streaming devices —
such as those made by Apple, Boxee, Roku, Popcorn Hour, D-Link, NETGEAR,
Western Digital and TiVo — with global over-the-top (OTT) media server revenue
jumping 38 percent and unit shipments up 68 percent in 2011 as more service
providers offer streaming video to their subscribers.
