Massive Chinese set-top box orders favour locals

The magnitude of China Telecom‘s set top plans – with 3.6 million set tops being ordered in a variety of programs – shows how Chinese companies are likely to dominate the set top industry in the coming years and months. The tender for this round of 2012 devices is just complete and will only take the giant operator through to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Any hints of what chippery is in the boxes? Outside China, some flavour of ARM might be the obvious candidate. In China, their locally-developed MIPS clones may look rather more credible than they usually have done elsewhere in the world - but how are they at doing SoC designs? Any facts available?

Any hints of what software is in the boxes? Have Microsoft finally given up on the STB market yet? Did MS ever have another big win outside the CEO->CEO golf-course arrangement which presumably got them BT Vision deal? Are there any other ready-to-go platforms?

Did Pace even bid for the deal (if they still exist)? Mind you, mass market deals like this aren't always profitable even if you win...

[Curly4]

Dose this indicate how closed China is? Or is it that western manufacturing cannot compete with Chinese companies for one reason or another?

[Trevor Marron]

Hardly surprised they are buying Chinese kit....

Hardly surprised they are buying Chinese kit, after all that is where most electronic kit in the UK comes from these days....

[Justin Clements]

What's the point?

At best, these orders represent $600m in orders, with an outside best of $60m in profits for the companies concerned, and probably an awful lot less that that. There is precious little money in these boxes - so who is concerned (or not) that they get a slice of it?

[someone up north]

JOBS , JOBS ...

What's the point? →

JOBS , JOBS , JOBS,

HOPE YOU ARE EMPLOYED