The multimedia over coax, or MoCA standard is enjoying a crest in North America thanks to operators rolling out advanced set-top functionality, like DirecTV’s (News - Alert) Genie DVR.
Market research firm Infonetics Research finds in its latest semi-annual Home Networking Devices vendor market share and forecast report that sales of set-top boxes (STBs) with embedded MoCA technology grew 23 percent in the second half of 2012 while MoCA adapters, though still shipping in small amounts, soared into the triple digits, or upwards of 129 percent.
Infonetics (News - Alert) expects MoCA STBs to account for 46 percent of home networking device sales by 2017.
“MoCA is again driving growth in the home networking device market, particularly shipments of video gateways in North America,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for Broadband Access and Pay TV at Infonetics Research. “Deployments of cable and satellite STBs with integrated MoCA are slowly reaching a boil, and we expect DirecTV’s Genie, Dish’s Hopper, and Comcast’s (News - Alert) XG1 set-tops to see increased shipments throughout 2013 and beyond.”
All three STBs boast additional functionality, like the ability to record five or six shows at once, and, in the case of DISH’s Hopper, the ability to skip over commercials in previously recorded content. All have proven to be competitive vanguards for the upper echelon of pay-TV subscribers, as competition continues to burn hot for traditional cable and satellite TV providers.
MoCA was designed to be a the universal standard for home entertainment networking, and is the only home entertainment networking standard in use by all three pay TV segments---cable, satellite and IPTV (News - Alert). The current MoCA specification can support multiple streams of HD video, deliver up to 175Mbps net throughputs, and offer better tools for controlling the user experience via parameterized quality of service (PQoS). There are more than 118 certified products commercialized worldwide.
The MoCA segment is certainly one of the highest growing in the home networking market: the research firm found that the global home networking device market overall, which includes residential gateways; broadband routers; HomePlug (News - Alert) Powerline adapters; STBs; optical network terminals (ONTs) and coax-Ethernet adapters; and HPNA/G.hn adapters, totaled $4.9 billion in the second half of last year, just a five percent increase over the first half of 2012.
North America is the home networking device revenue share leader, capturing 45 percent of global second-half revenue.
Broadband router revenue grew six percent in 2H12, thanks to shipments of higher-end 802.11ac and 802.11n Wi-Fi routers in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Vendor wise, the report found that in the race for broadband router revenue market share, Actiontec saw the biggest jump, up 30 percent from the first half of last year.