Cable, and satellite operators all saw sustained – but slowed – video subscriber growth in 2009. As a result, operators held off on more significant infrastructure investments, resulting in a down year for video infrastructure overall outside of VOD servers and edge QAMs.

In the ongoing battle between cable and telco IPTV operators, both continue to spend furiously to add video on-demand and streaming content server capacity to support the rollout of on-demand HD content and provide start-over and remote storage-digital video recorder services.

“All this requires the delivery of unicast streams to set-top boxes,” says Jeff Heynen, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for broadband and video.

"While telco, cable, and satellite operators all saw sustained video subscriber growth in 2009, it certainly was not at the growth rates of years past, so operators held off on more significant infrastructure investments," he adds.

Infonetics has released the fourth quarter (4Q09) editions of two video-related market share and forecast reports: Video Infrastructure and Subscribers and Set-Top Boxes and Subscribers. Highlights of the two reports are as follows:

Video infrastructure market highlights:

• Worldwide video infrastructure revenue held steady from 3Q09 to 4Q09 at $625 million, with all segments up but one. Up: video on-demand (VOD) and streaming content servers, video encoders, IPTV middleware/content delivery platforms, edge QAMs, digital cable middleware, and satellite video middleware. Down: video content protection software.
• For the full year 2009, video infrastructure revenue decreased 11% to $2.5 billion
• Worldwide video on-demand and streaming content server revenue increased 60% from 2008 to 2009, and is expected to increase rapidly over the next four quarters.

3DTV is expected to be popular for particular content, primarily movies and sporting events, but will have little impact on how operators spend to deliver 3D content, except for devices that improve access network bandwidth, such as edge QAMs.

Huawei, generally not known for their video infrastructure outside China, leads the video on-demand and streaming content server market, followed by Cisco.

There were 417 million cable video subscribers worldwide in 2009; that number is expected to hold steady through 2014 as standard cable video subscribers switch over to digital.

Set-top box market highlights:

• Motorola is the worldwide set-top box market share leader, followed by Cisco and Pace.
• Worldwide total set-top box (STB) revenue grew 7% in the fourth quarter, following a dismal third quarter.
• The number of video subscribers increased across the board in 4Q09, and more existing subscribers also upgraded to premium HD and DVR set-top boxes, a trend likely to continue.
• For the full 2009 year, worldwide STB revenue reached $11.2 billion, down 5% decrease from 2008, as macroeconomic conditions tempered subscriber growth, especially among North American and European cable operators.

Measured improvement is expected for the set-top box market in 2010.