Week in research: CMTS responds to cable bandwidth demand; smart energy drives ZigBee semiconductor growth

Countries remain divided on home energy management: While the idea of home energy sounds compelling, the willingness of consumers to pay for such a service varies by country as revealed in Strategy Analytics Smart Home Strategies' (SHS) "Segmentation and Analysis of Attitudes towards Energy Consumption: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and US," report. In the study, the research firm identifies groups that are willing to make either small or large investments to improve energy efficiency, including the installation of solar panels or even moving into a more energy efficient home. While consumers in France and Italy said they would spend money on energy saving measures, consumers polled in the UK showed little interest. Release

CMTS market responds to cable's bandwidth demand: Despite traditional third quarter seasonal slowness, global cable broadband revenue was up 14 percent since Q3 2010, illustrating that cable operators continue to demand higher broadband capacity. "Cable operators continue laying the foundation for DOCSIS 3.0 services and IP video, as evidenced by the significant growth in CMTS downstreams for residential consumers," notes Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics Research. Following two quarters of double-digit percent gains, the combined CMTS and edge QAM revenue declined 11 percent to $413 million worldwide. In North America, cable broadband equipment revenue was down 10 percent sequentially, but up 37 percent year-over-year. Out of the four major CMTS equipment vendors--Cisco, ARRIS, Motorola, and Casa Systems--only Cisco's market share is up year-over-year, at 59 percent, just one share-point shy of its all-time high, reached the previous two quarters. Release

Consumers can't get enough of online video: As of the end of October, over 200 billion online videos were viewed worldwide. comScore's new Video Metrix report found that almost 1.2 billion people age 15 and older watched 201.4 billion videos online globally during October 2011. One of the top sites for watching online video was Google's YouTube.com with almost 88.3 billion videos viewed during the month. Not far behind Google was China-based Youku, Inc. with 4.6 billion videos viewed in October (2.3 percent global share), followed by VEVO which accounted for nearly 3.7 billion videos (1.8 percent share). Other notable players in October included 2.6 billion videos were watched on Facebook during the month (1.3 percent share), followed by Japan-based Dwango Co., Ltd. with 2.5 billion videos viewed (1.2 percent share). Article

Smart energy drives ZigBee semiconductor growth: While ZigBee has utility for a number of applications including 3D glasses, the majority of the future anticipated growth will be driven by the smart grid. By 2015, In-Stat forecasts that semiconductor revenues for 802.15.4, the standard that ZigBee is based upon, will likely surpass $1 billion in 2015 with over 71 percent coming from the smart grid/automated meter reading market. Norm Bogen, VP Digital Entertainment at InStat said that "ZigBee seems like a natural technology to funnel smart meter data back to the utility" because it "is already in the vast majority of smart meters that communicate with devices inside the home." Besides the smart grid, Bogen added that other sizable markets for ZigBee technology include "home automation, driven by energy savings, and consumer lighting, due to the sheer number of lighting fixtures in the home and office." Release