W-CDMA to generate most revenue through 2015, Dell'Oro says

The LTE equipment market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 81% during the next five years, according to a new study by Dell’Oro Group. The market for LTE equipment could reach $8 billion by 2015, and Dell’Oro expects picocell revenues to be 9% of the total LTE eNode B revenues during that time.
Small cells, including picocells, are gaining favor as operators are more interested in heterogeneous networks that allow them to offload data from the macrocellular network in congested areas and increase capacity to accommodate increased demands on the network from data traffic.
While LTE technology may be the fastest-growing segment, Dell’Oro said W-CDMA revenues will drive the industry during the forecast period and will represent more than 70% of all revenues in 2015. The overall mobile infrastructure market should grow at a 4% CAGR between 2010 and 2015.
“Based on recent conversations with leading wireless operators, we have slightly raised our picocell forecast,” said Stefan Pongratz, an analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “In the past year, we have seen that operators have shifted from thinking and talking about small cells, to conducting actual trials on picocells. More operators are now focused on investigating and trialing best solutions and approaches to complement their macro networks so they could increase capacity and performance in high-utilization areas. While we believe the macro LTE network will carry the majority of the traffic through 2015, we believe vendors will start recognizing significant pico eNode B revenues in the outer years of the forecast period,” added Pongratz.