Communications and Technology Industry Research

Telecommunications equipment vendor ZTE has been awarded the 2009 IPTV (News - Alert) Equipment Vendor of the Year title by Frost & Sullivan.

 

Frost & Sullivan noted that Global IPTV subscriber base has been growing rapidly since 2005, at an average annual growth rate of 78.0 percent. By the end of 2008, global IPTV subscriber base had reached 2.184 million, marking a year-on-year growth at 63.7 percent.

 

Globally, Asia is now the most important emerging IPTV market. Besides Europe and the United States, the Asian IPTV market has gradually attained large scale, especially in South and East Asia and China. Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) thinks this was primarily due to the drive of broadband market in Asia.

 

According to Frost & Sullivan, ZTE (News - Alert) accounted for 42.0 percent of the Asian IPTV middleware market in Q1 2009, showing its dominance in the region. Besides the Asian market, ZTE attained significant share in the emerging markets such as South America and Africa.

 

In emerging markets like South and East Asia, Commonwealth of Independent States, and South America, ZTE is actively utilizing the extensive resources of carrier clients in the broadband access market. For example, ZTE is taking advantage of the better broadband infrastructure available in the South American countries, and with its comprehensive influence in telecom field, the company tries to seize potential IPTV opportunities.

 

ZTE plans to further deepen cooperation with carriers and to promote the market development actively in order to strengthen its leading position in the emerging market, Frost & Sullivan noted.

ZTE is also suggested to explore the European and North American markets, mainly in tier 2 and tier 3 carriers, especially to seize opportunity to satisfy the carriers' demand for low operating cost during the economic crisis, the research firm said. The provision of end-to-end solutions, the triple-play applications, and lower operating costs are driving the company to invest in these markets.

 

The latest in the series of ZTE’s IPTV contract wins  is a large-scale commercial IPTV contract from CANTV (News - Alert), the largest telecom carrier in Venezuela. This contract, according to ZTE, is considered as the largest IPTV project in the whole South America region. The CANTV IPTV project is significant in the region because it is expected to trigger a wave of large-scale commercial IPTV deployments by other carriers in the region. ZTE will focus on covering most part of Venezuela's territory in the next five years.