Market research firm Infonetics Research reportedly has released a new report saying that the worldwide cable modem termination system market dropped 32 percent in the third quarter of this year, to $246 million.

 

According to the report, this has happened after posting the largest single quarter on record in the second quarter, at $360 million.

 

Companies have been withholding investments in new or existing technologies in this sluggish economy, Infonetics says. The broadband sector, which had forecasted a rosy picture not too long ago, is reeling under the recession. That’s forced the broadband companies to scale down business predictions and go slow on investments.

 

According to the Infonetics Research (News - Alert) report, the third quarter is always the slowest quarter for spending on cable broadband aggregation equipment. But this year, this quarter looked worse, as some operators decided to go slow on their purchasing in advance. The revenue has also declined thanks to the downward price pressure, says the report.

 

Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband and IPTV (News - Alert) at Infonetics Research, said that with housing starts down and consumers digging in for what appears to be a long recession, major operators are beginning to slow their rollouts of CMTS and universal edge QAM ports.

 

“Although Comcast (News - Alert), Time Warner, Cablevision, and other major North American operators are still moving forward with their DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts, they are doing so with less fervor,” Heynen said.

 

While the instant future does not look too promising for the CMTS market, Infonetics Research seeks companies who are still doing well. The report states that while ARRIS is the number one CMTS revenue leader in North America and Central and Latin America, Cisco (News - Alert) leads by far in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region and the Asia-Pacific.

 

The report also states that the number of worldwide standard and wideband cable broadband subscribers is expected to top 66 million in 2008.

 

CMTS market is not the only one that took a hit due to the sluggish economy, according to Infonetics. The research firms also released a report where it stated that the service provider VoIP market also took a hit for the third quarter this year. According to the report, the market saw an eight percent drop during 3Q08, falling to $816 million.