Devoncroft Big Broadcast Survey benchmarks 100 media technology suppliers

The release of this data provides a standardized benchmark for streaming executives evaluating vendor performance and technology roadmaps. As the industry shifts toward cloud-based infrastructure and AI-driven workflows, these reports offer a rare demand-side view of which suppliers are successfully meeting buyer requirements. This transparency helps stabilize a fragmented market where 100 different suppliers compete across specialized niches like QoE measurement and orchestration. For the broader ecosystem, the survey signals which emerging technologies have moved past the hype cycle into actual budgetary planning. Watch for the upcoming Amsterdam summit findings to reveal whether GenAI adoption is outpacing traditional IP-based workflow transitions in 2026 budgets.

The survey arrives amid a contraction in global media technology spending. Devoncroft's Market Sizing and Analysis Report found that total market value for media technology products and services declined 2.4% in 2025 to $67.3 billion, with managed services expected to account for 55% of aggregate industry revenue in 2026 and grow approximately 1.1%, offsetting ongoing declines in product revenues tied to legacy operations (devoncroft.com, April 2026). That shift from hardware products toward managed and cloud services frames the competitive positioning data the survey collects.

Devoncroft identified several catalysts likely to drive sector spending in 2026, including the Winter Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, and U.S. midterm elections, each requiring significant investment in media technology infrastructure. The firm also noted that AI-related spending rose materially in 2025 and appears likely to continue into 2026, though it cautioned that the scale of AI's impact on the sector remains too early to judge (devoncroft.com, April 2026). These demand-side pressures are the backdrop against which survey respondents evaluate suppliers.

The 2025 edition of the survey profiled more than 100 technology suppliers across 29 individual product categories, with several thousand media professionals in over 100 countries participating (devoncroft.com, March 2026). Respondents ranked suppliers on a 1-to-10 scale for overall opinion, and Devoncroft published league tables showing the 30 highest-ranked suppliers globally, with separate regional breakouts for the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. Across the four geographic tables, 48 vendors appeared in at least one ranking (devoncroft.com, March 2026).

Product categories covered in the 2025 reports spanned encoding and transcoding vendors such as Ateme, AWS, Bitmovin, Harmonic, MediaKind, Mux, Synamedia, and Telestream; public cloud providers including Akamai, Alibaba, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud; and QoE measurement firms like Bitmovin, Brightcove's Wicket Labs, Conviva, JumpTV, Media Melon, Mux, and Nice People at Work (devoncroft.com, August 2025). The 2026 edition expands coverage to 31 categories, reflecting the addition of newer workflow segments as media companies adapt operating models around personalization, automated operations, and multi-platform distribution (devoncroft.com, April 2026).