Cisco, Harmonic Rule Cable Access in Q3Cisco, Harmonic Rule Cable Access in Q3

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Harmonic Inc. (Nasdaq: HLIT) remained in the catbird seat in their respective cable access gear categories during a third quarter that saw global revenues in the segment jump 14 percent to US$413 million year-on-year, according to new data from Infonetics Research Inc.

Cisco kept its lock on the cable modem termination system (CMTS) market with 59 percent of the revenue share, up from 53 percent a year ago, driven by solid shipments of its 3G60 card, says Infonetics analyst Jeff Heynen. Cisco's current share is just one point shy of its all-time high, reached the previous two quarters, he noted.

Arris Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRS) was second, with a 21 percent share of CMTS revenues, followed by Motorola Mobility LLC 's 19 percent . Casa Systems Inc. held steady at the rear with 1 percent, with most of those revenues originating from pockets of Europe and China.

Arris edges upward
Infonetics said Harmonic maintained its healthy lead in edge QAMs, with 40 percent share, but perhaps the bigger story is what's going on with Arris now that it has closed its acquisition of BigBand Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: BBND). (See Arris Snaps Up BigBand .)

BigBand's edge QAM revenue share jumped from 10 percent to 13 percent in the quarter. When coupled with Arris's 8 percent piece of the pie, Arris is now nudging up against Cisco, which held 21 percent of the market.

Another Q4 budget flush?
Although cable access revenues rose on a year-on-year basis, they did decline 14 percent sequentially, which is no surprise since the third quarter is an historically slow one for vendors.

Heynen isn't optimistic that there will be a big bounceback in the fourth quarter, which has been notorious for MSO buying sprees. The analyst said many MSOs are building out their existing Docsis 3.0 deployments rather than stocking up for a big deployment push in 2012. (See Arris Swirls With MSO 'Budget Flush'.)

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable