Arris remained the top dog from a revenue perspective in a global cable access market that raked in $445 million in the third quarter of 2014, up 8% versus the previous quarter, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
That figure factors in worldwide revenues for cable modem termination system (CMTS), converged cable access platform (CCAP), edge QAM and coax media converter (CMC) equipment. CCAP is a next-gen high-density platform that combines the functions of the CMTS and the edge QAM, while the CMC is a stripped down form of a CMTS that is becoming popular in China and other markets that are focusing on more distributed architectures. The CMC was historically tied to C-DOCSIS, an architecture that has been integrated with the CableLabs DOCSIS specifications.
Of that combined equipment market, Arris pulled down 50% of the revenues in the third quarter of 2014, followed by Cisco Systems (30%), Casa Systems (18%), and Harmonic (3.5%), according to Infonetics.
Cisco, once the market’s leader, could start to catch up when it releases the cBR-8, its next-gen, integrated CCAP product, for general availability.
“Everyone is waiting for the cBR-8,” Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics, said. “Once it’s ready, the market is going to go gangbusters.”
Not that the market’s doing shabbily now. Although shipments of total upstream and downstream DOCSIS channels, at 1.2 million, were down some on a sequential basis in the third quarter of 2014, they were up 95% versus what was shipped globally a year ago, according to Heynen.
Additionally, CCAP revenues rose 7% in the third quarter, to $360 million, versus the previous quarter. Heynen said the shift to CCAP is currently most acute in North America.
Infonetics expects the number of DOCSIS channels shipped globally to nearly triple from 2013 to 2015. According to the research firm’s current projections, about 4.5 million DOCSIS channels will ship this year, and surge past 6 million in 2015.
