Broadband CPE devices have best year ever; WiFi-enabled CPE taking off

USA: Infonetics Research released excerpts from its fourth quarter 2012 (4Q12) and year-end Broadband CPE and Subscribers: PON, FTTH, Cable, and DSL market share and forecast report, which tracks DSL, cable, and fiber to the home (FTTH) customer premises equipment (CPE), residential gateways, and broadband subscribers.

“Broadband CPE enjoyed its strongest year yet in 2012, benefiting from a combination of ongoing technology shifts and the need to support legacy broadband services and subscribers,” notes Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research.

“Cable operators are gaining significant traction with DOCSIS 3.0 in North America, Europe, Korea, and Japan, and they’re in the early stages of rolling out video gateways that combine DOCSIS CPE with video transcoding capabilities. These gateways allow cable companies to deliver a whole-home, multi-screen service to customers, and we anticipate hearty growth for the devices over the next few years.”

Heynen adds: “WiFi-enabled CPE is really heating up. In 2012, nearly half of all DSL units sold were WiFi enabled, and we’re forecasting this to swell to 74 percent by 2017. The growth of WiFi-enabled CPE is proof positive that service providers are quickly moving to more integrated devices to control the user experience in the home.”

Highlights:

* Despite global broadband CPE revenue declining 3 percent sequentially in 4Q12, 2012 was a standout year for broadband CPE devices, with revenue increasing 13 percent, to $7.7 billion.

* The strongest growth came from the cable CPE segment, where revenue grew 26 percent year-over-year.

* DSL CPE shipments were down 4 percent in 2012, though on the bright side, VDSL CPE shipments jumped 39 percent, reaching 29 million units.

* Huawei is the broadband CPE market share leader for 4Q12 and the full year 2012, followed closely by ZTE; both vendors benefitted significantly from the FTTH rollouts at China Telecom and China Unicom.

* ARRIS maintains the top revenue share spot in the DOCSIS 3.0 CPE segment, based on strong EMTA shipments to N. American operators; Motorola, Cisco and NETGEAR follow.

* In the highly competitive FTTH CPE segment, Infonetics expects ongoing vendor market share shifts in 2013, hinging largely on shipments in China.

* Worldwide, there were 57 million FTTH subscribers in 2012, while cable broadband subscribers totaled 111 million.