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Where do vendors to cable think the industry is heading? Evidence from 2013 Cable Show data

Where do vendors to cable think the industry is heading? Evidence from 2013 Cable Show data

For the past four years (2010 – 2013) I have been collecting data about exhibitors at the Cable Show. Key observations based on the most recent data:

  • The number of exhibitors continues to decline, down to 251 in 2013 from 345 in 2010 (Figure 1).
  • Programming is the most popular exhibitor category, and has been steadily increasing in popularity since 2010. In 2013 nearly one-third of exhibitors classify themselves under programming. Multi-screen content, HDTV, video on demand, and IPTV are the second, third, fourth, and fifth most popular categories (Figure 2).
  • The categories with the biggest increases in representation since 2010 are multi-screen content, programming, HDTV, new technology, and cloud services (Figure 3).
  • The categories with the biggest decreases in representation since 2010 include telecommunications equipment, services, and VOIP (Figure 4).

Exhibitor attendance

This year, the website listed 251 exhibitors, continuing a steady decline from 2010 (Figure 1). The number is biased upwards because an exhibitor can be counted multiple times if it appears in multiple booths.

Figure 1: Number of Cable Show Exhibitors, 2010-2013

Number of Exhibitors

 

Hot or Not?

The website shows the categories of products, services, or technologies each exhibitor selects to describe itself. An exhibitor can select several categories. To evaluate the prevalence of each category I total the number of times each category is selected, and then divide that by the number of exhibitors to make it comparable across years.

The table below shows the top 20 categories for 2010 – 2013. Programming has remained the top category for all four years. However, multi-screen content jumped to second place, followed by HDTV, pushing video on demand and IPTV to numbers four and five.

topcategories

 

Hot

Figure 2 shows how the top 5 exhibitor categories for 2013 have evolved over the past four years. Fully one-third of all exhibitors classify themselves as programming, nearly twice as many as in 2010. Multi-screen content did not exist as a category in 2010 while 16 percent of all exhibitors included themselves in this category in 2013.

Figure 2: Share of Exhibitors with Products in Top 5 2013 Categories Over Time

topcategorychart

 

Consistent with the above figure, from 2010 – 2013 cable programming increased in representation more than any other category. Multi-screen content saw the second-largest increase, followed by mobile apps, new technology, and cloud services.

Figure 3: Categories with Biggest Increase in Representation Since 2010biggestincreases

Not

Telecommunications services and equipment has seen the biggest decrease in representation since 2010, followed by VOIP, program guides, and optical networking. However, because “program guides” was not included as a category in 2013 it is not clear if the category truly became less popular or is now simply called something else.

Figure 4: Categories with Biggest Decreases in Representation Since 2010

biggestlosers

 

What does this mean?

The data themselves have certain problems that make drawing strong conclusions difficult. For example, counting exhibitors and categories implicitly assumes that each exhibitor is identical in size and importance, which clearly is not true (Figure 5). Additionally, the categories are self-reported by the exhibitors and do not appear to have strict definitions. Exhibitors have no incentive to select grossly inaccurate categories, since that would attract people unlikely to purchase their products, but exhibitors probably tend towards being overly-inclusive so as not to miss potential clients. This tendency might bias towards especially popular technologies. For example, perhaps exhibitors take liberties in claiming they offer “cloud services” because those contain popular buzzwords rather than because their products truly offer much in the way of those services.

Despite these shortcomings in the data, they provide one source of information on where economic actors with money at stake think the industry is headed over the next year. And, according to them, this year the industry is trending more towards its traditional role as video provider, focusing on programming and multi-screen content.

Figure 5: Exhibitor Map, 2013 Cable Show

map

 

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cable, media, programming

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