This is the fourth in a 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.
Recently, posts which rank broadcast technology vendors include:
- The Top 30 Broadcast Technology Vendor Brands by Overall Opinion, Ranked, Globally and Regionally
- The Top 30 Broadcast Vendor Brands by Net Change in Brand Image
- Innovation Rankings for Broadcast Technology Vendors — The Top 30 Globally
In keeping with the theme of top 30 rankings, let’s now turn to one of the most important metrics for any technology company – quality.
In an industry that prides itself on the fidelity of its sound and images, the perception of quality is a very important metric for broadcast technology vendors. Many vendors use quality as one of the key components of their market positioning.
To determine the market’s perception of the quality of broadcast technology vendors, respondents were asked to rank broadcast technology vendor brands for “Quality” 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.
In all cases, these results are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order in which they were ranked by respondents to the survey.
As with the top 30 innovation rankings published earlier, this list contains a broad mix of vendors table including both audio and video and audio companies.
There are also interesting similarities and differences in terms of the types of products produced, geographic location and company size (something that is not measured in the BBS and won’t be discussed further here). So let’s look a little deeper into these results.
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Number of products per vendor – Single Product Companies Dominate Quality Rankings
One obvious question that should be asked when reviewing these results is how many products are produced by each vendor on this list. This will help us to understand if whether quality comes from small focused companies, or large multi-product vendors.
A breakdown of how many product categories are produced by each vendor on the top 30 quality list is shown below:
With 22 out of 30 vendors on this list producing a product in only one BBS category (out of 27 measured) it’s clear that focused, specialized companies are regarded as quality leaders in the eyes of the market.
This finding reinforces a previous post called Purchasing Preferences of Broadcast Technology Buyers – “Best-of-Breed” or “One-Stop-Shop?, which shows that broadcast technology buyers overwhelmingly prefer to evaluate products from individual suppliers and create best-of-breed solutions.
Nevertheless it’s also worth pointing out that large companies can also be considered industry innovators. For example Grass Valley is covered in 10 product categories in the 2010 BBS and Avid is covered in 7 product categories.
Please keep in mind that this is not an absolute measure of the products produced be each vendor. In total, the 2010 BBS looked at 148 vendors in 27 separate product categories (based on the IABM’s industry model), but even so it did not necessarily cover the entire product range of all vendors.
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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 EMEA are the clear quality leaders, while companies based in the Americas and Asia trail the pack.
In terms of individual countries, the Germany and the USA are tied with 11 companies each on the Top 30 Quality Rankings. Japan, the UK, Finland and Belgium round out the rest of the countries where the quality leaders are headquartered. 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 quality list for the 2010 BBS.
Out of the 27 product categories covered in the 2010 BBS, 23 appear on this list; showing that quality is widespread across the broadcast industry.
Audio products lead the list of products produced by the top 30 quality leaders, with microphones, audio consoles and audio monitors topping the rankings.
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) 
