NEW YORK, USA: Worldwide revenue derived by service providers and cable companies for IPTV, cable video, and satellite video services is forecast to grow to $234 billion in 2013.

This is according to Infonetics Research's three video-related market share and forecast reports: Video Infrastructure and Subscribers, Set-Top Boxes and Subscribers, and Video Services and Subscribers,  three reports published in December.

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Jeff Heynen, directing analyst, broadband and video, Infonetics Research, said: "The growth pace slowed for new video service subscribers and fewer existing subscribers upgraded to premium services, two unifying trends defining the IPTV and video market in the third quarter."

"Holiday shopping and new purchasers of HD TV sets will likely result in an up-tick in premium service upgrades, but subscriber growth across the board will be tepid until macroeconomic conditions improve," Heynen cautions.

Market Highlights
Worldwide set-top box (STB) revenue dropped six percent in 3Q09 from 2Q09, due to lower subscriber growth, a decrease in purchases of add-on STBs by subscribers with multiple televisions, and operators looking to replenish their inventories

Motorola is the worldwide set-top box market share leader, followed by Cisco and Pace.

Worldwide revenue for all video infrastructure segments declined quarter-over-quarter, including VOD and streaming content servers, video encoders, IPTV middleware/content delivery platforms, video content protection software, edge QAMs, digital cable middleware, and satellite video middleware

However, combined revenue for all video infrastructure segments is up 90 percent year-over-year, and quarterly growth is expected to pick up, led by VOD and streaming content servers, video encoders, and edge QAMs.

The biggest threat to revenue growth will be online (or “over-the-top”) viewing, which allows users to stream programming delivered over the Internet via sites like Hulu and YouTube, and to aggregate programming via services such as Boxee.