Survey Sez 11/07/12

According to ABI Research, Microsoft’s Mediaroom IPTV platform leads the IPTV middleware market and continues to grow in market share as of mid-2012 to 23 percent of deployed IPTV boxes, despite an environment that is beginning to fragment with many small and regional players. Chinese system integrators ZTE and Huawei are up-and-coming market leaders in that country, particularly with China Telecom, which use different suppliers on a regional basis. Says Sam Rosen, ABI Research practice director/TV & video, “With the exception of Cisco, who recently purchased NDS, the system integrator’s role in customer experience will likely decline over the next few years; instead, this role will be left to client-centric middleware companies with better user experience. In addition to Microsoft, companies such as Viaccess-Orca (a subsidiary of France Telecom), Netgem and others, all have a distinct philosophy on how to create an IPTV system.”