The cable broadband hardware market grew steadily in the first quarter of 2009, though the cable CPE segment dropped a bit, says communications market research firm Infonetics.

 

According to the researcher, worldwide cable broadband hardware (CMTS, universal edge QAMs) revenue held steady in 1Q09 from 4Q08, down just 0.2 percent. CMTS sales actually inched up a bit (0.9 percent) in 1Q09 from 4Q08.

 

The worldwide market for cable broadband hardware registered record revenue of $1.23 billion last year.

 

The ailing economy, combined with an increasingly aggressive telco competition, will harden the task of signing up more customers for the broadband service, the market research firm says. Still, compared to the overall bloodbath in telecom equipment spending in 1Q09, the cable broadband market was somewhat of a bright spot.

 

According to Infonetics, the number of DSL subscribers worldwide grew 25 perecnt in 2008 to 283 million.

 

“It is because cable operators remain committed to expanding their DOCSIS 3.0 footprint, transitioning from T-CMTS and I-CMTS to M-CMTS architectures, and introducing hybrid IP/QAM video services to support tru2way and DVB-MHP services," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst, Infonetics Research, in a statement.

 

Operators may take a break in 2009, says the analyst, because they need to digest the downward trend and be strategic with new rollouts.

 

Although Cisco leads the overall worldwide market, ARRIS extended its key revenue share lead in the pivotal North American market by nearly 7 percent.

   

Sales of broadband customer premise equipment (CPE), including DSL, cable, residential gateways, and voice CPE, dropped 8% sequentially in 1Q09 to $945 million.

 

Growth in the broadband CPE market is expected over the next few years as service providers deploy more integrated (and more expensive)home networking devices to deliver bundled voice, data, and video services with guaranteed QoS, says Infonetics.

 

The wideband CPE segment is up 42 percentyear-over-year in 1Q09 from 1Q08. That includes wideband cable modems, wideband cable broadband gateways, and wideband EMTAs.

 

Thomson (News - Alert) and Motorola, with their breadth of CPE shipments to both DSL and cable operators, continue to lead the broadband CPE market worldwide.

 

Companies tracked include ARRIS, AVM, Cisco (Linksys (News - Alert), Scientific Atlanta), D-Link, Gemtek, Huawei, Motorola, NETGEAR, Nokia Siemens, Sagem, SMC, Sphairon, Sumitomo, Telsey, Thomson, Ubee (Ambit Broadband), U.S. Robotics, Westell, Xavi Technologies, Zhone, ZTE (News - Alert), ZyXEL, and others.