IPTV looking robust, wards off expected nosedive

SET-TOP BOXES MARKET HEALTHY, HYBRID

Likewise, set-top boxes (STBs) are an equally crowded market, with the top eight suppliers capturing more than 1 million subscribers. Motorola and Amino, following its acquisition of hybrid STB provider Tilgin, are leaders here. Still, despite expectations that the market would peak in the next few years, Schultz said there is room for multiple, regional players.

“The reason STB is different is it’s perceived by a lot of local and state economies as a creator of jobs,” Schultz said. “It’s a little bit like the cell phone business was in the case where you have hundreds of varieties of cell phones out there globally and many of those are manufactured locally. Why isn’t there a world standard? A lot of local jurisdictions don’t want it that way. They want their own version for competitive reasons and also because it keeps their business local.”

In many of the IPTV deployments in the past six months, telcos took on the hybrid approach rather than launching full-blown IPTV systems, but this is still more common in Europe, which has been more aggressive in converting analog subscribers over to digital terrestrial. Shultz said in many of these cases, it made more sense for a local telco to go hybrid rather than try to carry all the broadcast channels through their network. The most sophisticated example that North American telcos can learn from, he said, comes from British Telecom, which has digital terrestrial channels and uses IPTV for its on-demand component.

“It will apply to the North American market, particularly in tier twos in rural areas where there still needs to be a faster and cheaper way to get to market,” Schultz said. “The operators can save a lot of cap ex on the headend. We think you will see replacement models for IP-Prime, which SES Americom was pushing, and we think you’ll see some other sources for those kinds of services develop. The rural US market can go with a hybrid solution. “