ZTE IPTV System

I was at the ZTE analyst meeting in Shenzhen, China on March 25 and 26. ZTE was quite serious about its telco IPTV system. It offers an open system that combines ZTE and third party components, including:

• Headends from Tut Systems (now part of Motorola), Optibase, Tandberg TV, envivio, and Thomson
• Video On Demand Servers from ZTE
• Middleware from ZTE
• Content Security from ZTE, Irdeto and Verimatrix
• Set-top boxes from ZTE, Sunniwell, and Yuxing

ZTE stated that its systems are in more than 20 deployments and trials and are currently supporting one million telco IPTV subscribers, including

• China (with 50 percent market share according to ZTE's numbers)
• Free Internet, Thailand
• VNPT Vietnam
• Belorussian Telecom
• Progroup, Estonia
• STC, Saudi Arabia
• Emcali, Columbia
• CanTV, Venezuela

ZTE's basic business strategy is to focus on developing countries, especially China and India. This is a good strategy, since this is where the new opportunities are coming from.

Irdeto to Focus on Emerging Markets

Irdeto, the Dutch content security company, will shift it focus away from North America and Europe and toward emerging markets. As part of this plan, its CEO will move from its Netherlands headquarters to its office in Beijing. He will continue to run the company from there.

Our recent report, Opportunities in TelcoTV, shows that nearly all of the major telcos in Europe and North America have selected their IPTV suppliers, so that while acquiring new business in these markets is still possible, it will not be easy. The major Asian markets such as India and China are the major IPTV opportunities that are still open today.