Networking major Cisco has extended its worldwide STB revenue share lead in the first quarter of 2013.
The other major STB vendors are Pace, Motorola and Echostar.
The global set-top box market-IP, cable, satellite and DTT STBs, and OTT media servers reached $4.4 billion in Q1 203, a decline of 5 percent from Q4 2012.
Driven by India and China, cable set-top boxes bucked the seasonal trend in the first quarter of 2013, notching modest gains in both revenue and shipments.
In June 2013, Cisco India announced that it now delivers enhanced TV viewing experience to more than 30 million Indian homes. Using the industry estimated average of five people per household, Cisco is now enabling an advanced TV experience to over 150 million viewers.
Cisco has signed pay-TV technology partnership with more than 100 operators worldwide, with leading Direct To Home (DTH) and cable operator customers in India including ADN, Airtel Digital TV, Asianet, Atria, CCN, Darsh Digital, DEN Networks, Fastway, GTPL, Hathway, JAK Communications and Tata Sky, to name a few.
Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research, said: “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.”
Infonetics Research says cable STBs and OTT media servers gained on a sequential basis in Q1.
56 percent of STBs shipped in Q1 were basic standard definition boxes, pointing to a larger shipment mix to emerging markets like China and India, where the focus is on digitization rather than advanced services.
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 will grow at 17 percent compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2017, the highest of any subscriber category.
