Microsoft maintains IPTV leadership

Saturday, 1 June 2013

Microsoft maintains IPTV leadership

Microsoft is still the only company to occupy two top slots in the regular snapshot of the IPTV market by leading analyst MRG.

MRG's IPTV Market Leader Reports (MLR) aims to identify which IPTV systems and software companies are leading in six IPTV market segments: access systems; video head-end systems (VHE); video-on-demand (VOD) server software; set-top boxes (STB); middleware (MW); and content protection/digital rights management (CP/DRM).

In the survey the IT giant has a leadership position in VOD and content protection, due mainly to its relationship with AT&T. VOD leadership was also driven by Microsoft’s relationships with large-sized IPTV providers in Western Europe. By contrast, in VOD in Asia is commanded by CASTIS and Anevia is top dog for VOD in the Middle East/Africa region for the first time.

Tracking More than 100 vendors and 940 IPTV providers, overall MRG found that the growth in the number of new IPTV service providers has been slowing down recently because many of the leading providers have already launched services.

The primary exceptions are the Middle East/Africa region as well as Latin America/Caribbean, which will likely see large growth in the next few years. Yet the analyst cautions that many countries in these regions have been slow to launch IPTV services, primarily because of government regulations prohibiting telcos from operating pay-TV services. Other countries, it adds, have run into technical hurdles and are busy upgrading their networks in preparation to launch their triple-play services.

Even though MRG expects some closures at providers, it believes that one of the biggest trends will be companies adopting hybrid TV services, supplementing their IPTV services with satellite, digital terrestrial or even cable technology.

MRG also notes that telcos are already offering additional services, such as over-the-top (OTT) video and TV, either as a separate service, or included within their IPTV platform. It suggests that the primary reasons for these changes are to gain more coverage in their regions, supplement their TV offerings and continue to gain TV subscribers. Hybrid services are becoming particularly popular in regions like Latin America.