REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—Two new reports on the wireless infrastructure market offered an upbeat review and outlook.
Dell’Oro Group released a new study that found the mobility infrastructure equipment market grew 7 percent last year to reach $40.1 billion, the highest level recorded in a calendar year. Strong sales of W-CDMA and GSM equipment boosted fourth-quarter sales to 8-percent sequential growth during the fourth quarter, said the report.
“The strength in the fourth quarter was due in part to robust sales of W-CDMA infrastructure, which increased by 30 percent over the third quarter and now comprises 17 percent of the total mobility infrastructure market,” said Greg Collins, senior director of mobility infrastructure research at Dell’Oro. “W-CDMA grew in every region of the world as operators improved coverage, including in North America, which accounted for 7 percent of W-CDMA sales during the quarter. In addition, strong subscriber growth continues to fuel the market for GSM-based infrastructure which grew by 9 percent sequentially to reach $6.7 billion in the fourth quarter.”
L.M. Ericsson dominated 2005 infrastructure awards with 30-percent market share.
A separate Dell’Oro study found the carrier Internet Protocol telephony market grew 64 percent year-over-year during the fourth quarter, with Nortel Networks Ltd. contributing the most to the market’s growth during the quarter followed by Alcatel Alsthom and Italtel. Dell’Oro said it raised its 2006 forecast for the market by 10 percent to more than $3 billion.
Visant Strategies predicted the mobile infrastructure market will experience strong growth during the next few years thanks to market expansion in emerging regions such as Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as continued data services growth.
“The movement of almost the entire world to wireless voice alone would bode well for infrastructure vendors during the oncoming years, but mobile application use as well as downloading of music and video content should also prove very beneficial to the mobile industry,” said Larry Swasey, author of the report. “Much of the data consumption in industrialized nations will be driven by the role IP networks and the seamless applications meant for such are beginning to play in most of our lives.”
The report, “World Mobile Infrastructure 2006,” said EDGE and W-CDMA growth will continue through 2010, and CDMA2000 market presence also will expand. GSM/GPRS networks will find success in emerging markets, said the report.
“There is room for everyone. There will be well over 3 million base stations deployed by 2010 serving nearly 2.8 billion individual users which will amount to about 3.3 billion wireless accounts,” said Swasey.
