According to a recently published report by Synergy Research Group, "Q2 2006 IPTV Router Market Shares," the worldwide IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) Router market increased 66 percent year-over-year and over 16 percent sequentially. The market was driven by Carriers aggressively building out IPTV deployments. Synergy believes IPTV provides a disruptive opportunity for Service Providers to compete directly with Cable TV companies for the delivery of digital television.

Cisco, Alcatel, and Juniper dominated IPTV Router sales in Q2 2006. Cisco held the largest market share at 66.6 percent, followed by Alcatel and Juniper at 15.9 and 11.2 percent respectively. When reviewing the report in its sub-categories, Juniper captured 30 percent market share for the IPTV BRAS segment while Alcatel owned over 27 percent of the Ethernet IPTV segment.

"Carriers are aggressively investing in IPTV network deployments," said Mark Glodowski, Analyst at Synergy Research Group. "While there is a sizeable amount of hype surrounding IPTV, the reality is that dollars are being spent today and deployments are beginning to roll out. In 2006, Synergy estimates the IPTV Router market will approach, if not exceed, $2 Billion."

  Table 1. Q2 2006 WW IPTV Router Market Shares
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                   Position            Q-Q Growth
Cisco                 1                 + 19.7 %
Alcatel               2                 + 22.3 %
Juniper               3                  + 2.1 %
Avici                 4                 + 16.4 %
Redback               5                 + 26.2 %

Synergy Research Group is the first market research firm to publish IPTV Router market shares. The IPTV router numbers are an overlay of Synergy's highly respected quarterly Router market statistics. The new Router segmentation was created to measure the rapid pace of service provider investment in the pursuit of residential television services. The new Synergy Router IPTV segmentation includes four brand new segments: Total IPTV Routers, IPTV Core Routers, IPTV BRAS, and IPTV Ethernet.