IPTV World Forum 2008

NEC Announces a Generic “Me Too” IPTV Solution Offering

| Mar 14, 2008 | Digital Media Infrastructure | Show Update

| Analyst: Yoav Schreiber

Current Perspective: Negative Vendor Importance: Low Market Impact: Low

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Event Summary

March 11, 2008 – NEC announced at the IPTV World Forum in London that it will launch an end-to-end IPTV business offering leveraging the company’s Next Generation Networks carrier applications. The offering, which will include both an internally developed video delivery server as well as CASCADE’s QualiTVision IPTV middleware, will be marketed internationally. Availability is expected later this year, and the company expects to generate 50 billion yen (USD 500 million) by 2010.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Negative on NEC’s announcement at the IPTV World Forum 2008 that it will deliver its own end-to-end IPTV offering because, in a market already crowded with credible and established vendors of end-to-end IPTV solutions, the NEC announcement is, in essence, an amalgamation and repetition of the various offerings already put forward by its top-tier rivals. Lacking substantial differentiation in technology or vision, the announcement also includes a product roadmap “wish list” that is too generic to gain market credibility.

• Vendor Importance: Low to NEC, because although the company does not yet participate in the IPTV and related application services layers, the company has apparently expended a fair amount of resources (R&D, marketing, etc.) to create the elements of its IPTV solution offering. However, despite NEC’s established position delivering network access infrastructure (especially to leading IPTV operators such as PCCW in Hong Kong), it is unlikely that NEC will prove to be materially successful in engaging higher level IPTV solution sales capable of fulfilling its 2010 goal of YEN 50 billion (USD 500 million).

• Market Impact: Low on the overall digital media infrastructure (DMI) market, which has an established roster of vendors with market proven end-to-end IPTV solution offerings. Companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Motorola, Thomson, ZTE and UTStarcom can already point to leading market shares and large scale deployments across the globe, giving them differentiated leadership positions which make a specific response to NEC unnecessary. Meanwhile, sideline players like Juniper Networks and Nortel have approached this crowded market by leveraging their infrastructure to tackle unique aspects in enabling new business models such as multi-play content service revenue sharing and IPTV application delivery.

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