Video monetization and optimization market shares 2014

For those of you, loyal readers who have followed this report, now in its third edition, there will be no surprise as to why monetization is making its appearance in the title and figures so prominently in the analysis and opinions voiced there.

Mobile video optimization was a solution brought forward by web optimization, browsing gateway and mobile video vendors that was positioned as a means to drastically reduce the volume of video transiting through a mobile network. With a combination of lossless (caching, pacing…) techniques aimed first at reducing the inherent waste of delivering videos created for the internet and laptops in a mobile network, the solution evolved towards aggressively reducing video volume through lossy (transcoding, transrating) techniques.

Vendors in this space have evolved their offering from a broad, binary application of the technology, essentially proxying and optimizing all video traffic all the time to a more granular, targeted implementation that performs optimization to portion of the traffic, at specific points in time in specific locations, driven by policy engines or relying on network congestion detection, either on explicit indication from the RAN or interpolation relying on the state of the TCP traffic. Most vendors are also now launching customer engagement tools, sophisticated analytics or new video charging capabilities to enable early monetization plays.

As usual, I provide market share calculations in term of deployment per vendor, the unit being one operator / country. For instance, Verizon Wireless counts for one deployment, even though the operator might deploy 40+ data centres. Groups such as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom or Telefonica count for each of the properties where the technology is deployed.

Market shares

1. Flash Networks
   Flash Network’s market share is 40% . It is the market share leader and has grown faster than the market since the last update, through organic growth and acquisition of Mobixell Networks.
2. Citrix
   Citrix’ market share is 30%. The company has grown faster than the market  since the last update.
3. Openwave Mobility
   Openwave Mobility's market share is 8%. The company has grown faster than the market since the last update.
4. Venturi Wireless
   Venturi Wireless markets is 8%. The company has lost market shares since the last update.
5. Others
   Allot, Avvasi, NSN, Opera, Vantrix (in alphabetical order) share the remaining 14%.

The market share calculations are based on a proprietary {Core Analysis} database, collecting data such as vendors, resellers, value of the deployment in term of total cost of ownership for the operator, operator name, country and region. These data are cross-referenced from vendors' and operators' individual disclosures. This database also includes over 130 opportunities in video optimization that are at different stage of maturity (internal evaluation, vendor trial, RFI, RFx...) and will close over the next 18 months.

The market share is valid at the time of publishing but change on a weekly basis, as new deals are awarded.

The market share in term of revenue is not published here but is available as part of my workshop on the video optimization market. The rankings in term of revenue per vendor are quite different from the installed market share, as different price strategies and different geographic markets are considered.

Mobile video monetization and MWC14 wrap up

This year's Mobile World Congress proved itself extremely busy, with many vendors graduating from slides to demos and customer announcements in the mobile video field.

As usual, my "Mobile Video monetization and optimization 2014" report, now in its 3rd edition, will be released at the end of March. It features the dominant market (net neutrality, privacy, sponsored data, service prioritization...) and corresponding technology trends (analytics, big data, NFV, encryption, TCP, web and video optimization, DASH, LTE broadcast, H.265, VP9, SPDY. HTTP 2.0, 4K...) as well as in depth analysis of vendors strategy in this market.


Haven't had a chance to look through all the mobile video related announcements at mobile world congress?

Here is a list of releases issued by some of the companies followed in this blog.

As it is now customary, Allot releases its "mobile trends report" in time for the show. It features a few interesting findings such as the facts that laptop dongle users seem to be more tolerant of stalls than smartphone users, continuing to watch videos after repeated stalls where smartphones tend to stop. Additionally, it shows that in the case of the network studied, the network was inefficiently allocating bandwidth, unable to recognize larger devices, video encoding and hungry video containers to alleviate video stalls...

Avvasi was one of the busiest companies in mobile video, with no less than 4 announcements, including 2 named customers: Video minutes solution launch, Wind Canada customer announcement, Virgin France customer announcement and GSMA award shortlist. The 2 named customers are both for the product launched last year to manage mobile video. Complete analysis of the solution in my report.

Citrix-ByteMobile released its latest Mobile Analytics report at the show as well. Findings include the fact that video constitutes now 32% of social networks traffic and statistics showing that while mobile advertising in 2013 doubled its audience from 2014, only one in twenty subscriber is likely to see today a mobile video ad. In other news, the company launched a new offering in the analytics space with ByteMobile Insight, fruit of a partnership with Zettics. Big data analytics seemed to be a recurring theme with many vendors this year, with virtualization a close second.

Busy with Mobixell Network's acquisition, Flash Networks nonetheless made a noticeable change in its communication and positioning with the launch of its "game changer" campaign and the celebration of Layer8, its successful carrier OTT monetization tool now deployed commercially in several networks.

Openwave Mobility launched a new engagement tool, for customer self care and operator notifications as well as the new release of its media optimization solution.

Opera-Skyfire were not overly present on the PR front, beyond an announcement related to poor video quality in Russia's 3G networks. They will certainly be able to announce new customer wins shortly.

Vantrix made the news with two releases. A follow up to their standing partnership with Kontron on NFV and big data analytics, backed by the customary product new release announcement.

All these companies, together with Affirmed Networks, Connectem, Divi Networks, Ericsson, Huawei, Mahindra Conviva, NSN, Saguna Networks, Vasona Networks... and many others in the "Mobile video monetization and optimization 2014" report.