Cisco Helps Drive CMTS Growth, Gains IP Telephony Share

Cisco got a nice boost from the market analyst community Friday(Aug. 20) after one research agency said the company picked up share in the enterprise IP telephone space while another said that

On the IP telephony front, Synergy Research Group reported that Cisco is leading the way in the enterprise voice-over-IP (VoIP) arena. In its report, Synergy said that Cisco held 31.8-percent share of revenue in the second quarter of 2004. The research agency also said that Cisco lead the way on IP phone shipments, accounting to 41.6-percent of all phones chipped in the second quarter of 2004.

On the CMTS front, Infonetics Research pointed to Cisco, along with Motorola and Arris, for an 18-percent increase in CMTS revenues between the first and second quarter of 2004. These three comm equipment companies, Infonetics said, captured 87-percent of the worldwide CMTS market, which totaled $425 million in 2003.

According to Infonetics, Cisco is the worldwide port and revenue leader in the space. Motorola held the number two spot while Arris came in third. In the second quarter, upstream port shipments increased 29 percent while downstream port shipments rose 63 percent. Sixty percent f these shipments can in North America.

"As cable operators add more data capacity, telephony, and multimedia services, worldwide CMTS revenue will grow steadily through 2007," said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research.In addition to reporting strong growths on the CMTS front, Infonetics is also seeing a big increase in shipments on the customer premise equipment (CPE) front. The research agency expects CPE shipments to grow 132 percent between 2003 and 2007. However, due to price erosion, revenue will only grow 20-percent during this period.

According to Infonetics, Motorola continues to hold the lead on the CPE front. Other big players in the space include Terayon, Ambit, Thomson, Toshiba, and Scientific Atlanta.