Cable STBs make big splash in Asia: Strong demand for digital cable set top boxes in Asia drove growth in the cable STB market segment in 2011, reports In-Stat. However, in North America the picture is less rosy: STB sales are decreasing as more subscribers drop their cable-based video service and cable MSOs tighten their capex budgets. While global digital STB unit shipments were down 1 percent, they will surpass the 55 million mark. Likewise, total digital cable STB product revenues were projected to reach $6.5 billion in 2011. Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI) and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) retained leadership as the top two digital STB vendors. "Although we are projecting global unit shipments to decrease slightly in 2012 and 2013, the ongoing shift from analog cable services to digital cable services in the developing world will boost demand again in 2014," says Mike Paxton, research director at In-Stat. Release
Data, pay TV drive Vietnam's telecom growth: Vietnam may be one of Asia-Pacific's smallest markets, but for what it lacks in size it is fast becoming what Pyramid Research says is the region's fourth fastest growing market. According to the new "Country Intelligence Report: Vietnam: Data Services and Pay-TV Pose Most Growth Potential in a Majority Mobile Market," the big driver of the country's telecom growth will come from data. Wireline broadband revenue is expected to grow at a 14.5 percent CAGR from 2011 to 2016, a factor due to both growing Internet usage and new investments in higher speed wireline technologies and extended coverage. At the same time, the pay TV market segment's revenue will advance at a 16.4 CAGR through 2016. Release
Service providers up their security game: Network security has become top of mind for service providers with the convergence of network traffic growth and increased security threats. Infonetics points out in its "Service Provider Security Drivers, Spending, and Vendor Leadership: Global Survey" that "nearly every service provider interviewed by Infonetics expects to increase security spending over the next year, in absolute dollars and as a percent of capex." They are spending on all aspects of security, including everything from basic firewalls and DDoS prevention to advanced protection against web-borne threats. Driven by ongoing data center consolidation trend and upgrades, service providers are looking at two kinds of security systems from vendors: high performance hardware solutions that can handle hundreds of Gigabits to Terabits of traffic and virtual appliances installed on virtualized servers. Juniper, Symantec, McAfee, and Cisco remain the top vendors in this segment. Release
