The combined IPTV and switched digital video market is forecast to grow in healthy double-digits annually to reach $9.8 billion worldwide, according to Infonetics Research's latest quarterly "IPTV and Switched Digital Video Equipment, Services, and Subscribers" report.

"With each quarter, the battle for video subscribers gets more heated," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for IPTV at Infonetics Research. "Buoyed by the success of rollouts by Orange, Free, Neuf, Fastweb, PCCW, Telefonica, and China Telecom, IPTV service providers continue to build out headends and spend on IP set-top boxes to aggressively court video subscribers. Meanwhile, North American cable MSOs, such as Comcast and Cablevision, are leading the charge in switched digital video, to free up bandwidth and offer more HD content to their subscribers."

Other highlights from the report:

• Total worldwide IPTV and SDV equipment revenue hit $1.1 billion in 4Q07
• The number of IPTV subscribers is forecast by Infonetics to top 97 million worldwide by 2011
• Worldwide service provider revenue from IPTV services is expected to grow nearly 10-fold in the 5 years between 2007 and 2011
• Worldwide pure IP set-top box revenue grew 16% in 4Q07 over 3Q07 and is set to skyrocket in 2008
• Motorola leads the worldwide IP set-top box market in 2007, Microsoft leads the IPTV middleware and content delivery platform market, and UTStarcom leads the integrated digital headend platform market
• In 2007, the regional breakdown for worldwide IPTV equipment revenue was 40% North America, 30% EMEA, 28% Asia Pacific, and 2% CALA

Infonetics' report provides market size, market share, and forecasts for IPTV equipment, including integrated digital headend platforms, video on demand and streaming content servers, IP video encoders, universal edge QAMs, IPTV middleware and content delivery platforms, and IP STBs. The report also tracks IPTV, cable IPTV and cable SDV service revenue and subscribers.

Companies tracked include 2Wire, ADB, Alcatel-Lucent, Amino, ARRIS, Celrun, Cisco, Dasan Networks, Ericsson, Huawei, Microsoft, Motorola, Netgem, Nokia Siemens, OptiBase, Pace, Phillips, Sagem, Samsung, Scientific Atlanta, Sumitomo, Tatung, Telsey, Thomson, Tilgin, UTStarcom, Yuxing, and others.