According to Infonetics Research, broadband customer premises equipment (CPE) had its strongest year so far in 2012, largely driven by DOCSIS 3.0 and WiFi. Despite global broadband CPE revenue declining 3% sequentially in 4Q12, broadband CPE device revenue increased 13%, to $7.7 billion, for the year as a whole.The strongest growth came from the cable CPE segment, where revenue grew 26% year-over-year. ARRIS maintained the top revenue share spot in the DOCSIS 3.0 CPE segment, based on strong EMTA shipments to North American operators; Motorola, Cisco and NETGEAR followed.
- DSL CPE shipments were down 4% in 2012, though VDSL CPE shipments jumped 39%, reaching 29 million units.
- Huawei was 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.
- In the 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.