Arris captured the No. 1 spot in the worldwide cable-modem termination system market in the second quarter of 2009 -- with 47% share in the period -- as Cisco Systems lost "significant" revenue share, according to market research firm Infonetics Research.
While Arris took the quarterly CMTS lead for the first time, Cisco should close the market share gap in the third quarter and resume its lead by the end of the year, according to Infonetics directing analyst for broadband and video Jeff Heynen, citing recent conversations with vendors and operators.
Arris, in reporting second-quarter results last month, cited strong sales of CMTS equipment as helping boost net income.
Overall, worldwide CMTS and edge QAM hardware revenue dropped 13% sequentially in the second quarter of 2009 compared with the first three months of the year, Infonetics said. On the other hand, with several operators heavily focused on rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 services, CMTS downstream port shipments increased nearly 9% worldwide compared with the first quarter.
Heynen said that although total CMTS ports and revenue are expected to increase in the second half of 2009, that won't be enough to result in year-over-year growth.
"After the heavy investments that were made in CMTS and edge QAM equipment in 2008, when revenue was up a whopping 43% from 2007, there was almost no way 2009 would be an up year for the cable broadband market with or without a recession," he said.
The Infonetics CMTS and edge QAM report tracks cable broadband subscribers; CMTS revenue and ports; and edge QAM channels and revenue. The report provides CMTS market share data for Arris, Casa Systems, Cisco, Motorola and others, while it tracks edge QAM vendors Arris, BigBand Networks, Casa, Cisco, GoBackTV, Harmonic, LiquidXStream, Motorola, RGB Networks, Tandberg Television, Teleste and Vecima Networks.
