MRG names IPTV market leaders in new report

October 10, 2007 – US research firm MRG has named the six IPTV market leaders for their respective product areas in its new study “IPTV Market Leaders Report – September 2007”.

The report tracked the top 120 vendors in 24 regional sub-sectors, covering over 600 IPTV operations and 8mn subscribers worldwide.  The study names Alcatel-Lucent as leader of access solutions, Motorola as leader of video headend solutions, Alcatel-Lucent as leader of middleware, Kasenna as leader of video-on-demand solutions, Motorola as leader of the set-top box market and Verimatrix as leader of content protection and digital rights solutions.

“It’s far too early to call the IPTV market ‘mature’, but the industry is definitely becoming less volatile,” said Len Feldman, Director of IPTV Analysis for MRG.  “In our last February ’07 report, 50% of the Number-One companies changed; but in this one, less than 20% of the Number-Ones changed.”  Some volatility was observed to continue due to large increases in subscriber numbers, such as experienced by Verizon, France Telecom, Neuf Cegetel, Belgacom and Telefónica, and also due to the growing influence of Chinese vendors such as Huawei, UTStarcom and ZTE.

First-place industry leaders were observed to be increasing their lead, as illustrated by Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent.  MRG added however that there is room for small companies in most product areas, due to large regional and local variations in market demands, as shown by smaller firms such as Verimatrix and Kasenna, both global leaders.  The report’s authors also anticipate growth potential to be very important to small companies with installations in high-growth operations such as those of China Netcom and Belgacom.