Posts Tagged ‘technology trends in broadcasting’

Broadcast Technology Vendors Predict Strong Increase in Software Revenue

broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast industry trends, Broadcast technology channel strategy, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Nov 01 2010

When I recently saw the headline “Solving the TV Station Hardware Dilemma” on the Broadcast Engineering website, I stopped to read.

Although the article turned out to be about integrated playout (a.k.a. channel-in-a-box) automation servers rather than a debate about hardware versus software in a broadcast facility, it got me thinking about the shift in broadcasting towards IT-oriented technologies, and what vendors are doing about this market transition.

Our research has found that the move to IT-based operations is one of the broadcast industry’s most important technology trends. This will obviously have a major impact on the broadcast technology vendor community. 

Some commentators like boutique investment bank Silverwood Partners say that there is a diminishing hardware opportunity and that value is migrating to software-based products.  So what are broadcast technology vendors doing to change their product ranges and business models?

To better understand these issues we asked the nearly 800 broadcast technology vendors who responded to the 2010 Big Broadcast Survey, about the make-up of their current and future product portfolio.  Vendors were asked to break down the sources of their revenue by product hardware, software, maintenance, and service. 

Here’s what we found:

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Current Sources of Vendor Revenue – Product Mix

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Hardware products represent the largest percentage of vendor revenue, with more than 80% of respondents indicating that hardware sales represents greater than 20% of revenue, and 31% reporting that hardware products represent more than 80% of revenue.

While more than half of vendors reported that software represents a significant portion of their revenues, only 6% identified software as representing more than 80% of their sales.

Maintenance and service revenues represent a small part of the overall vendor revenue stream today.

But what are vendors projecting for the make-up of their future revenue?

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Future Sources of Vendor Revenue – Product Mix

Vendors were also asked to predict how their revenue by product mix would change over the next several years.

More than half of vendors report that they expect sales of hardware products to stay the same or increase over the next several years, while 20% expect hardware product sales to decline over the same period.

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Vendors expect to see large growth in software sales, with 76% of vendors predicting sales of software products will increase over the next 2-3 years.  Included in this number are an impressive 51% of vendors who expect software product sales to increase by more than 10%.

Vendors are also clearly looking towards maintenance and service revenues to expend their businesses.  Whereas the previous chart shows that today’s revenue from these sources is not huge, vendors are almost all anticipating that maintenance and service income will stay the same or increase over the next several years. 47% of vendors predict that maintenance revenue will increase, and 48% of vendors predict that customer service revenues will increase during this period.   

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Projected Future Vendor Hardware / Software Revenue – by Company Type

To better understand these responses, it’s helpful to profile the research participants according to the type of company they represent.

In the charts below, I have broken out the responses to the projected product mix question based on whether the respondent works for a company that provides primarily hardware products, primarily software products, or has a mixture of both.  In this case “primarily” is defined as more than 70% of a company’s revenue.  Responses for the average of all vendor responses are also shown for the sake of comparison with charts above.

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Hardware Sales

Firstly, let’s look at what vendors predict will happen to their hardware sales.  The chart below shows that 20% of respondents expect hardware product sales to decline over the next few years, while more than half expect hardware product revenue to stay the same or increase over the same period.

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However, there is a clear difference between those vendors who currently produce primarily hardware products versus those who currently produce primarily software products.

73% of respondents from companies who primarily sell hardware products think that their hardware revenue will grow over the next few years.  Conversely, just 39% of respondents from software-oriented companies think their hardware revenue will increase.

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Software Sales:

What about revenue from software products? The chart below shows how vendors project their software sales will change over the next 2-3 years.

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Virtually all vendor respondents predict that their revenue from software will increase over the next few years.  Just 5% of respondents believe that software revenue will decline during this timeframe.

67% of vendors respondents whose company sells primarily hardware products predict that their sales from software products will increase over the next few years, while 86% of respondents from software-oriented vendors believe their software revenue will grow.

These results show that while hardware product sales are not going away any time soon, technology suppliers are responding to market demand for software-oriented products.  Although this analysis does not attempt to put a value on or quantify the percentage of future software sales, it appears that vendors are gearing up to provide more software solutions in the belief that this will help drive revenue growth.

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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.

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Devoncroft Digest – Week Ending May 14th 2010. Earnings Season Continues

broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research, Broadcast technology vendor financials | Posted by Joe Zaller
May 16 2010

Earnings season continues with good numbers from broadcasters, and mixed results from vendors.

Broadcaster Earnings Continue to Rise

Broadcasting & Cable reported that Gray Television reported first quarter revenues of $70.5 million, up 15% from the revenue it announced in the first quarter of last year. Gray said the number exceeded its initial expectations.

B&C also reported that Scripps saw its revenues rise 11% y/y. The company is also forecasting strong results for its second quarter.

US Satellite broadcaster Dish Networks was in the news several times last week.  It posted its Q1 results at the beginning of the week, which showed revenues rise by 5 percent, but net income fall by 26 percent.  The company also said it was prepared to shut down its DVR service if it loses its protracted patent battle with DVR pioneer Tivo. But then on Friday a US federal appeals court said the case between Dish and Tivo. This sent Tivo shares down by more than 40%.

 

 

Broadcast Technology Vendor News

EVS Reports 5th Consecutive Growth Quarter, Disappoints Analysts

Broadcast server and storage vendor EVS reported its Q1FY10 numbers this week.  According to the company’s press release to company reported its 5th quarter in a row of growth.  However both the revenue and profit were below the expectations of analysts, and the company’s stock price fell by 10% to a 10 month low following the announcement.  A Reuter’s article quotes analyst Nico Melsens of KBC as saying “the order book was okay, first quarter sales were okay, but the gross margin was below consensus forecast.”                        

Harmonic Holds Analyst Day, Discusses Omneon Deal

Following the release of its earnings last week, Harmonic held meeting for analyst day during which the company’s CEO and CFO presented an overview of the company’s business to equity analysts. One of the topics of interest was the company’s recent acquisition of broadcast server and storage vendor Omneon.   You can listen to a reply of the analyst presentation here.  Information on the Omneon deal is presented at the 21.5 minute mark, as well as in the Q&A. 

Sony Expects to Return to Profit

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Sony says expects to return to profit this fiscal year after two straight years in the red, as painful restructuring measures give way to an improved outlook for its troubled television and video game units. Sony said its restructuring is finally paying and that it expects its television business, which has lost money six years in a row, to return to profitability, boosted by 3-D TVs which it hopes will drive new interest and slow the price declines that eat into profits.

Vizrt CEO Passes Away

TVB Europe reported the sad news that Vizrt CEO, Bjarne Berg, has passed away suddenly at the age of 59.   

New CMO at Chyron

Broadcast graphics vendor Chyron announced that it has hired a new VP and CMO.   Bonnie Barclay comes from The Branding Iron, LLC – an Atlanta-based television and branding company.  She has also worked at Scripps, Cox, and Belo.

 

 

Market Research Note of the Week:

Purchasing Preferences of Broadcast Technology Buyers – “Best-of-Breed” or “One-Stop-Shop?

How do buyers of broadcast technology products prefer to purchase: using a best-of-breed approach (evaluating products from multiple vendors) or a one-stop shop where one vendor provides a complete solution?

To find out, we canvassed the opinions of several thousand broadcast professionals around the world as part of the 2010 Big Broadcast Survey.

There are a huge number of vendors in the broadcast technology space, and the industry’s vendor community is fragmented. Major international trade exhibitions such as NAB and IBC often have between 1000 and 1500 exhibitors at their shows.

On the one hand are the many vendors who are relatively small and specialize in one or two product types. There are also a small number of large international vendors who produce dozens of product types. There are obvious advantages that come with the scale that large companies have achieved, but small companies often argue that their more nimble, focused approach results in superior products.

This has led to an ongoing debate within the broadcast industry about whether it’s better to buy so-called best-of-breed solutions from a variety of suppliers or go to one large company and buy everything from a single vendor.

There are pros and cons to each approach. Dealing with a number of companies may indeed enable buyers to assemble a best-of-breed system, but this approach may introduce interoperability issues and potential finger pointing between vendors if things go wrong. Dealing with a large one-stop shop gives buyers the peace of mind that interoperability issues have been solved, that there is one phone number to call if things go wrong and that there will be no finger pointing.

To see the results of this research, including a chart with a breakdown of different types of buyers, click here.

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Purchasing Preferences of Broadcast Technology Buyers – “Best-of-Breed” or “One-Stop-Shop?

broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast industry trends, Broadcast technology channel strategy, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
May 11 2010

In previous post, I looked at the purchasing channels that are typically used by different types of buyers when broadcast technology products.   This reveled that there is considerable variation in the way broadcast technology products are purchased.

Today I am going to look at how buyers of broadcast technology products prefer to purchase – a “best-of-breed” approach (evaluating products from multiple vendors) or a “one-stop-shop” where one vendor provides a complete solution.  

There are a huge number of vendors in the broadcast technology space, and the industry’s vendor community is fragmented.  Major international trade exhibitions such as NAB and IBC often have between 1,000 and 1,500 exhibitors at their shows.

On the one hand are the many vendors who are relatively small and specialize in one or two product types.  There are also a small number of large international vendors who produce dozens of product types.

There are obvious advantages that come with the scale that large companies have achieved, but small companies often argue that their more nimble, focused approach results in superior products.

This has led to an ongoing debate within the broadcast industry about whether it’s better to buy so called “best-of-breed” solutions from a variety of suppliers, or go to one large company and buy everything from a single vendor.

There are pros and cons to each approach.  Dealing with a number of companies may indeed enable buyers to assemble a “best-of-breed” system, but this approach brings the possibility of interoperability issues and potential finger-pointing between vendors if things go wrong.  Dealing with a large “one-stop-shop” gives buyers the peace of mind that interoperability issues have been solved, that there is one phone number to call if things go wrong, and that there will be no finger pointing.

To find out what the market thinks about this issue, respondents to the 2010 BBS were asked the following question:

When purchasing broadcast technology products, do you prefer to buy from a single “one-stop-shop” or select “best-of-breed” solutions from multiple vendors?

 

In an era when vendor consolidation is on the rise, it’s interesting to note that where possible, the majority of traditional broadcast technology buyers prefer to evaluate and purchase so called “best-of-breed” solutions from multiple vendors.

Broadcasters, as well as cable programmers, playout, and centers cable / satellite / IPTV operators showed the strongest preference to select best-of-breed solutions. These customers typically have large-scale operations requiring large amounts of technology products.  They also tend to have significant technical resources to evaluate and select best-of-breed solutions.

Conversely, film studios, government and educational buyers exhibited the strongest preference to purchase from a single supplier.  This reflects the fact that there are several strong dealers who cater specifically to the Hollywood studios; and it’s likely that government & educational buyers may consider local dealers and systems integrators to be single suppliers.

Once again, these results show that there is considerable variation in the broadcast technology purchasing process, based on customer category.  They also highlight the importance to vendors of developing go-to-market strategies that encompass direct sales, while at the same time developing and maintaining strong relationships with third-party players in the distribution channel.

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.

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Broadcast Industry’s Largest Market Study Reveals Most Important Technology Trends

broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research, market research, technology trends | Posted by Joe Zaller
Mar 17 2010

This is the first in a series of articles about 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.

This article looks at how respondents ranked a variety of technology trends in terms of importance to their business.

 

To determine the most important technology trends in the broadcast industry, respondents were presented with a list of 14 trends and asked to choose which is the “most important,” “second most important” and “also very important” to their business. Respondents could choose only one trend as “most important” and “second most important”, but were able to choose as many as they liked for “also very important”.  Note that this question specifically asks which trend is most important to their company’s business, rather than which is the most exciting technically or is currently generating the most industry “buzz”  in order to gain insight into the commercial drivers behind the respondent’s answer. 

This article presents the answers to this question in two ways – as a global trends index, and by the percentage of respondents who indicated the importance of each trend to their business.

The 2010 BBS Global Trend Index

To create an industry index of trends, the responses to this question were then weighted based on the importance of each trend to the business of the respondents.  Responses that were ranked “most important” were multiplied by 5, responses ranked “second most important” were multiplied by 3 and those deemed “also very important” were multiplied by 1.

The table below shows the industry trend importance index.  Please note that in all cases, the charts and tables in this article show the responses from technology buyers (i.e. non-vendors).

The top three trends (by a good margin) in the 2010 BBS Global Trend Index are multi-platform content delivery, file-based / tapeless workflows, and the transition to HDTV operations.  

The top ranking of multi-platform content delivery in this year’s study is a strong move up from last year’s study where it placed 4th in terms of importance.  In 2009 the top three trends were transition to HDTV operation, tapeless workflows and IP content delivery.

The 2010 BBS Global Trend Index show that the broadcast industry in 2010 is focused on generating new revenue streams (through multi-platform content delivery) and achieving cost savings through operational efficiencies (through file-based / tapeless workflows).  At the same time however, it’s clear that the industry intends to finish what it started by continuing its transition to HDTV operations (the top trend in 2009). 

The trends that rank #4 through #9 on this year’s Global Trend Index all share similar characteristics with the top three trends.  Namely creating efficiencies (e.g. IP networking & content delivery and the move to automated workflows); reducing cost (e.g. centralized operations); and generating new sources of revenue (e.g. VOD and targeted advertising).

Technology-oriented trends (those that require capital expenditure) such as 3DTV and the transition to 3Gbps operations, which are considered to be hot topics in the run up to NAB 2010, are ranked towards the bottom of the index.


 

Ranking Trends by Percentage of Respondents

Looking at this data another way reinforces the finding from the BBS Global Trend Index, and highlights again that the industry is looking for ways to generate new revenues while increase operating efficiencies and reducing operating costs.

The table below demonstrates this by showing the same response data ranked by “most important” and without the 5-3-1 weighting applied.  For the most part, the trends stay in the same position, but there are a few changes to the rankings. 

When the data is presented in this way multi-platform content delivery remains the trend ranked “most important to most respondents.  However, the second and third-ranked trends – transition to HDTV operations and file-based / automated workflows – swap positions in this ranking versus the trend index above. 

Regardless of this subtle shift, one of the most noticeable things about this chart is the how strongly the top three trends were ranked as most important relative to the others.  It’s clear the moving to HD, achieving operational efficiencies and finding new revenue streams are a clear priority for the broadcast industry in 2010.

As with the BBS Global Trend Index above, new technology trends (those that require new investment) such as transition to 3Gbps operations and 3D TV move are lower down the list of priorities.

It’s also worth noting which trends were ranked as “also very important” by respondents, because this is a strong indicator of what will be important over the next few years.  Once again, multi-platform content delivery tops this list, indicating that it is not only important to the broadcast industry today, but that it will continue to grow in importance over time.  In addition to multi-platform content delivery, the trends that were ranked strongly in terms of “also very important” to the businesses of respondents are (in descending order): IP networking & content delivery, improvements in compression efficiency, file-based / tapeless workflows, move to automated workflows, video on demand and the transition to HDTV operations.

Keep in mind when reading this information that, all data in this article measures the responses of all non-vendor participants in the 2010 BBS, regardless of organization type, size or location; and shows the number of respondents that are evaluating products without regard to size of project or value of purchase.  Granular analysis of these results is available as part of the full 2010 BBS Global Market Report, which is available from Devoncroft Partners.

Published by Devoncroft Partners, the annual Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) is the largest and most comprehensive studies of broadcast industry trends and technology vendor brands.  The BBS provides insight into market trends and the perceptions of leading broadcast industry vendor brands by a wide variety of broadcast professionals across the world.  It also delivers vendor brand ranking “league tables” in a variety of product categories; all of which can be segmented by geography and customer type.  More than 5,600 people in 120+ countries participated in the 2010 BBS project. Information about the 2010 BBS can be found at www.devoncroft.com 

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