This is part of series of posts about the how the brands of broadcast technology vendors were ranked by respondents to the 2010 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS).
Each year as part of the Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global sample of broadcast professionals are asked to rank their opinion of a number of technology vendor brands on a wide range of metrics. This information is used to create a series of reports, which through benchmarking and industry “league tables” enable these vendors to understand their competitive position in the market.
More than 5,600 people in 120+ countries participated in the 2010 BBS, making this the largest ever and most comprehensive study of the broadcast industry. In addition to measuring a variety of broadcast industry trends, more than 100 vendor brands (in 27 separate product categories) were evaluated by respondents.
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Recently, posts which rank broadcast technology vendors include:
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This post looks at how respondents ranked broadcast technology vendors for what is perhaps the most subjective driver we measured in the 2010 BBS — value for money.
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For some respondents value for money might mean low price, for others it might mean superior price/performance, while for others it could mean peace of mind in mission critical environments, regardless of the price.
Whatever the definition of value, the combination of a poor economy over the past few years and customer budget constraints have made many broadcast professionals more value-conscious than ever. As a result, broadcast technology vendors must respond by continually delivering more value for less money. This drives innovation in the broadcast supply chain as vendors are forced to compete on multiple levels.
Respondents were asked to rank broadcast technology vendor brands for “Value for Money” on a scale of 1-10 — with 10 being best in the market, and 1 being worst in the market. The top 30 ranked brands for overall opinion are shown below for the global sample of all respondents.
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In all cases, these results are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order in which they were ranked by respondents to the survey.
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Value for Money – The Top 30 Globally, Alphabetical Order
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There are a wide variety of vendors on this list, including large & small companies and those who produce audio & video products. In order to better understand what drives the perception of value, we need to look at some of the factors behind these results. These include the number of products produced by each vendor, the geographic location of the each vendor, and the types of product produced by the top 30 value companies.
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Number of products per vendor
When reviewing these results it’s important to understand how many products are produced by each vendor on this list. This will help us to understand if whether reliability comes from small focused companies, or large multi-product vendors.
The 2010 BBS evaluated 27 separate product categories. In the previously published top 30 quality rankings, and top 30 reliability rankings, single product companies (those who were covered on only one product category in the 2010 BBS) completely dominated the rankings with about 2/3 of all positions.
A breakdown of how many product categories are produced by each vendor on the top 30 value list is shown below:
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Just over half of the vendors in the top 30 value rankings produce a product in only one BBS category (out of 27 measured). This is slightly less concentrated that other findings, such as reliability where there were 21 single product companies in the top 30.
In the case of value, there is a mix of large and small, and single and multi-product companies. It’s worth pointing out here that much of this list is made up of the industry’s largest multi-product vendors. For example Grass Valley (10 categories), Evertz and Miranda (5 categories each), Sony (4 categories), Ross Video (3 categories), Apple, Black Magic Design, Cisco, For-A, Harmonic, Ikegami, Panasonic, and JVC (2 categories each).
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Geographic Location
Another factor to consider is the geographic location of each company on the list. By this measure, companies headquartered in the Americas are the clear value for money leaders, while companies based in the EMEA and Asia trail the pack.
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Keep in mind that when looking at geography, it’s important to remember that many of these firms are truly global, with offices all over the world, regardless of where they are headquartered.
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Product Categories
Finally, let’s look at the product categories produced by the vendors who made the top 30 value list for the 2010 BBS.
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Out of the 27 product categories covered in the 2010 BBS, 21 appear on this list. This is on par with other metrics. For comparison, there are 20 product categories in the top 30 reliability rankings and 23 product categories in the top 30 quality rankings.
Signal processing products lead the list of products produced by the top 30 value leaders. This is a fiercely competitive market that is at the heart of the transition to HDTV operations, and customers look for both value and quality. Cameras and audio consoles were close behind, while microphones, production switchers, routing switchers and video transport also made a strong showing.
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Please keep in mind when reviewing this information that, unless otherwise specified, all data these charts are presented in alphabetical order, not in the order brands were ranked by respondents to the 2010 BBS. Also, the charts in this posting measure the responses of all 2010 BBS respondents, regardless of their company type, company size, geographic location, job title and budget for broadcast technology products.
In order to get full value from this data, it is necessary to evaluate these results on a granular basis. If you would like more information, please contact Devoncroft Partners.
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This article is based on the findings from the 2010 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global study of industry trends, technology purchasing behavior and the opinion of vendor brands. With more than 5,600 people in 120+ countries participating, the 2010 version of the BBS is the largest and most comprehensive market study ever done in the broadcast industry.
Innovation — The top 30 broadcast technology brands, listed alphabetically (global sample of all respondents) 
