The worldwide sale of cable broadband equipment was up 14 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, according to a new report by Infonetics Research.
“While the cable broadband equipment market experienced its normal seasonal slowness in the third quarter, the important data to note is the year-over-year growth: Global revenue is up 14 percent from the year-ago quarter, indicating the overall market remains robust and that demand for increased broadband capacity among cable operators has not slowed. Cable operators continue laying the foundation for DOCSIS 3.0 services and IP video, as evidenced by the significant growth in CMTS downstreams for residential consumers,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics Research.
Overall, the combined cable modem termination system (CMTS) and edge QAM revenue was down 11 percent to $413 million in the third quarter, after two quarters of double-digit percent gains.
Of the four main CMTS equipment vendors – Cisco, Arris, Motorola and Casa Systems – only Cisco’s market share was up year-over-year, at 59 percent, which was just one share point short of its all-time high reached the previous two quarters.
Infonetics Research said that while it was no surprise that North American cable broadband equipment was down 10 percent sequentially, it was up 37 percent year-over-year.
Edge QAM revenue in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) increased 11 percent as operators continued their spending on edge QAMs to support DOCSIS/M-CMTS implementations.
Infonetics projected the number of cable broadband subscribers to grow from 108 million worldwide in 2010 to 125 million in 2015.
