At the end of 3Q07 there were estimated 9.4 million IP TV subscribers worldwide. An estimated 23% of live IP TV subscribers are being served by proprietary IP TV middleware. Those who have been successful selling the middleware solution off-the-shelf are still typically confined to one or two large accounts. Thomson leads the pack because France Telecom is the leader among the service providers. France Telecom still accounts for a big majority of Thomson middleware deployment.
Thomson manages over 13.2% of world’s IPTV subscriber base. Cascade follows Thomson at number two with 11.8%.
The biggest gain among middleware vendors during the quarter comes from Microsoft. The vendor has succeeded somewhat in ramping up the deployments at its tier 1 service provider customers. Microsoft IP TV middleware supports an estimated 846 thousand live IP TV subscribers (9% of the total worldwide).