MRG (Multimedia Research Group), an authoritative consulting firm in the multimedia field, released a research report based on 60 cable TV service providers, 100 satellite TV service providers, and 140 IPTV service providers around the world.
After rigorous evaluation of market share, the report lists six areas: broadband access system, set-top box (STB), middleware (MW), on-demand server (VOD), head-end encoder (VHE), content protection/digital Global ranking of major manufacturers of rights management (CP/DRM) and sub-regional rankings in six regions: Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Broadband Access System
From the perspective of subdivisions, in the broadband access system, the current leader in the IPTV access market is still Alcatel-Lucent, with a global market share of 51%. Alcatel has maintained its leadership in this subdivision for many years; The second position is jointly occupied by Adtran and Nokia Siemens, each with a market share of 11%, which is an increase of one percentage point over the statistics in the previous report; Ericsson ranked third, up from the previous report. one.
Alcatel-Lucent can maintain its long-term advantage because of its global competitive strategy. By contrast, other access vendors focus on one or two specific areas.
Set-top box
In the IPTV set-top box segment, Arris/Motorola ranked first with a global share of 20.8%, a slight decline from the statistics in the 2012 report; the second was ZTE, with a share of 18.1%; the third was Sagemcom, with a share of 8.2 %.
Set-top box manufacturers are the most crowded in the IPTV market, with a total of 27 manufacturers. Of course, the competition is quite fierce.
Middleware
A few years ago, when the IPTV market was just starting, operators generally used in-house systems, but this has changed, and only a few operators still use in-house systems, such as Free in France and Verizon in the United States.
The competition in the middleware field is similar to that of on-demand servers and set-top boxes. There are 24 manufacturers in total. The global leader is occupied by Microsoft with a share of 19.7%. ZTE is still in second place, and Huawei is in third place. Compared with the previous report, the rankings of the fourth and fifth places have changed again, but the top three manufacturers have remained unchanged.
It is worth mentioning that the competition for middleware in the Asian market is very fierce. With the continuous collection of new information, the rankings of Huawei and ZTE are constantly changing.
On-demand Server
The VOD server plays the most strategic role for operations. In addition to VOD, it transmits the most popular services, such as docking, interactive advertising, online PVR and OTT services. As users' demand for personalized services, such as social features such as recommending movies to friends, is expected to continue to fuel the growth of on-demand services.
On-demand server is the most competitive segment in the IPTV market. There are 15 manufacturers in this field, and none of them has a global share of more than 19%. But the No. 1 spot remains the same -- Microsoft leads with an 18.8 percent share. The second place is ZTE, with a global share of 11.4%, an increase from the 10.5% market share in the previous report, and SeaChange won the third place.
Head-end Encoder
In the head-end encoder segment, there are 11 manufacturers competing, so this is the segment with the most stable competition in the IPTV market. Among these 11 manufacturers, the top three are Harmonic, Arris, which has acquired Motorola's set-top box division (although the acquisition has just been completed, in order not to cause trouble, hereinafter collectively referred to as Arris/Motorola), Ericsson. The three companies each have a stable share of more than 27%, which together exceeds 86% of the global head-end encoder share. The share of other manufacturers is generally less than 5%, and some even less than 1%.
It should be pointed out that the head-end encoder is the most stable segment of the IPTV market competition. The reason is that the number of channels is calculable and generally does not change. The ranking of the field does not change very often.
Content Protection/Digital Rights Management
In the field of content protection/digital rights management, Verimatrix continued to maintain the world's first lead with a share of 34.1%; the second place was won by Microsoft, with a share of 20.6%; Arris/Motorola ranked third with a share of 9.6% .
With 15 players in this space, Verimatrix has an absolute advantage because it has a variety of different IPTV systems and a strong base of industry partnerships.
Rank by user scale
These rankings are based on MRG's tracking of 946 IPTV operators in the database, of which 480 are located in North America. In recent years, the emergence of new IPTV operators has slowed down, because most operators have already launched IPTV operators. It is foreseeable that in the next few years, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean region will be the fastest growing IPTV. fast area.
MRG is also subdivided according to the operator's IPTV customer scale. Tier 1 operators have more than 1 million users, Tier 2 operators have between 500,000 and 1 million users, and Tier 3 operators have 100,000 to 500,000 users. between, and so on. The MRG report also separately lists the rankings of various manufacturers in the field of set-top boxes and middleware among operators at multiple levels according to the number of users.
Among the global Tier 1 operators, the No. 1 set-top box supplier is Arris/Motorola, with more than 11.13 million users; the second is ZTE, with about 10.32 million users; the third is Huawei, with a user scale of 4.51 million.
Among the global Tier 2 operators, the No. 1 set-top box supplier is ZTE, with more than 1.46 million users; the No. 2 supplier is Arris/Motorola, with 580,000 users; the No. 3 is Sagemcom, with a user base of 580,000 350,000.
In the ranking of middleware suppliers according to the number of users, among the global Tier 1 operators, the first middleware supplier is Huawei, with 10.85 million users; the second is ZTE, with about 9.9 million users; ranking The third is Microsoft, with 7.6 million users.
Among the global Tier 2 operators, ZTE is the No. 1 middleware supplier with nearly 1.47 million users; Microsoft ranks second with nearly 3.04 million users; Huawei ranks third with 500,000 users .
The competition game of big manufacturers
The above ranking shows that most of the IPTV manufacturers are large multinational corporations with revenues exceeding US$1 billion and the number of IPTV users exceeding one million. This means that IPTV operators are not optimistic about small start-ups.
It is conceivable that when the operator giants develop some ambitious and expensive new projects, such as IPTV, they tend to choose to cooperate with large enterprises, which makes them feel reliable. In addition to some big players mentioned in this report, there are many small suppliers in the IPTV market, they provide some non-core products such as broadband aggregation for the industry. While large manufacturers are chasing large orders for network equipment and software licenses, small manufacturers focus on applications such as games, social networking, OTT, content recommendation, QoS, and interactive gadgets. IPTV is a global industry. Although small enterprises also have leading and excellent technologies, they cannot make it to the top of the list because they cannot effectively support the global business of multinational operator giants.
From the perspective of competition, in 2010, there were more than 20 key strategic mergers and acquisitions in the IPTV global market. In the past two years, this trend of mergers and acquisitions has slowed down, but there are still several mergers and acquisitions worthy of attention. For example, Arris bought Motorola's home business unit from Google, Nokia Siemens sold some IPTV assets, and Ericsson sold some access equipment assets to Calix.
Microsoft sells its IPTV business Mediaroom to Ericsson, and it appears that Microsoft wants to focus on the Xbox brand, despite its leadership in multiple areas of IPTV. With the deal expected to close in 2013, it is clear that Ericsson will soon be making a name for itself in the IPTV market.
To sum up, big manufacturers occupy the top of the rankings in various sub-sectors, and small enterprises are crowded in some sub-sectors, and most of the shares of each sub-industry are basically divided among the top three or top five. This ranking table also shows that the Chinese manufacturer ZTE ranks among the top three in half of the subdivisions, keeping pace with European and American giants, especially the core technology middleware of the IPTV system, which is only 90% different from the first-ranked veteran manufacturer Microsoft. Wan, this is another rapidly growing business sector of ZTE that has come from behind.
