Broadband access equipment battles heat up

The early market leaders in ADSL and cable modem customer premises equipment (CPE) saw flat or declining market share growth in 3Q99, while challengers began catching up, according to market research by Cahners In-Stat (www.cahnersinstat.com).

Alcatel and Cisco, which combined for 55 percent

of the ADSL modem market share in 3Q98, fell to just 36 percent of the market by the same period in 1999. Alcatel remained the market share leader, but Efficient Networks captured the second spot in 3Q99. Cahners InStat claims that this points to a growing trend for vendors to specialize in either central office (CO) equipment or CPE, as Efficient does.

Meanwhile, Motorola continued to lead the cable modem market in 3Q99, with 27.4 percent share, followed by Nortel at 14.5 percent. These figures were also down significantly from 3Q98; the two companies' combined 42 percent market share represents a significant drop from a year before, when they accounted for 68 percent of the market.

The findings are contained in "Q399 Analog and Digital Modem Market Analysis."