ABI Research: Residential gateways help drive up CPE shipments to 151.9M

The broadband customer premise equipment (CPE) market is set to go out with a bang in 2014, with ABI Research forecasting that worldwide broadband CPE shipments are expected to reach 151.9 million.

"The residential gateway segment continues to grow at a rapid pace: ABI Research expects global shipments will grow more than 9 percent in 2014," said Jake Saunders, vice president and practice director for ABI Research.

While DSL and CPE devices will retain their top spot, ABI said that DSL and cable sales could decline slightly in 2014 due to slow subscriber net additions. On the other hand, consumer adoption of advanced broadband access services will drive up VDSL2 and DOCSIS 3.0 CPE shipments, particularly in North America and Europe.

"North America and Europe are the regions with the highest VDSL device penetration," said Khin Sandi Lynn, industry analyst for ABI Research. "This is because operators in Western Europe are upgrading DSL infrastructure with VDSL and VDSL vectoring technologies."

Lynn added that total VDSL CPE shipments in the two regions make up about 50 percent of worldwide VDSL CPE shipments, while DOCSIS 3.0 shipments are expected to grow 11 percent in 2014.

At the same time, the ongoing rollout of service providers' fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) customer networks will facilitate "rapid growth" in fiber-based CPE shipments. ABI forecast that in 2014, fiber CPE shipments will grow about 16 percent year-over-year from 2013, reaching 41 million. Driven by aggressive deployments in China, ZTE took the top spot in the CPE device market ranking, followed by Huawei.

From an overall broadband CPE shipment perspective, ZTE also has the top ranked position, with ARRIS taking the second largest market share position.

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