Cisco's recent sale of its set-top box and cable modem business to Technicolor and Arris' announcement three months ago of its plan to acquire Pace, point to the changing landscape in the video infrastructure market.
According to Synergy Research Group, if both deals are approved and go through, there will be a change in this market segment, with Arris taking over from Cisco for the top spot, while Technicolor will be claiming the 3rd ranking. The research firm, however, said that while these deals will be pushing Arris and Technicolor to the forefront, Cisco will remain the clear market leader in both video infrastructure software and video network hardware.
As both the deals are being driven by changes in the client hardware (or CPE) market, the overall video infrastructure market will remain strong. With cloud architecture increasingly driving the video infrastructure market, Synergy predicts that Cisco will focus primarily on the network and software side of the business and sees insufficient benefits from maintaining its CPE operations.
John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group
While this clearly signals a shake-up of the video infrastructure market, the main implication is the divergence of the market into separate client hardware and network/software segments. Technicolor will be a pure play client hardware vendor while Arris will generate almost 80% of its revenues from client hardware. There is a strong case for arguing that neither Arris nor Technicolor will be direct competitors of Cisco once the deals close.