The Chinese vendor sees APAC, Middle East, Africa and Latin America as key small cell markets
Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei expects its small cell product line to generate revenue of $2 billion in 2020, the company’s president of small cell product line, Yuefeng Zhou, told RCR Wireless News.
The executive said the vendor expects revenue from the small cell business to expand by nearly 100% compared to the previous year, but did not provide hard figures.
Zhou said the main markets for Huawei in the small cell segment are South East Asia, South Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The executive also revealed that the Western European small cell market also is growing fast for Huawei.
China represents more than 50% of the global market, Zhou said, and, as such, is one of the most important markets for Huawei’s small cell business.
“Most ‘4.5G’ technologies such [as] multicarrier [carrier aggregation], [distributed multiple-input and multiple-output], 256-[quadrature amplitude modulation], [License Assisted Access] are starting commercialization from hot spot areas. These areas typically need more capacity and are key targets for small cell deployment,” the executive said.
“In the coming ‘5G’ deployments [from 2020], more high-band technologies will be developed especially with small cells. Hyperdense deployment for 5G networks also will need more small cells. We believe over 50% [of Radio Access Networks] shipped will be small cell in the 5G era.”
The executive also said that deep coverage for public areas, especially indoors, is one of the most important drivers for Huawei small cell business growth. “A number of carriers have started to consider their strategic deployment of small cell for the coming 5G era,” he added.
Huawei recorded 395 billion yuan ($60.8 billion) in 2015 revenue, climbing 37% year-on-year. Huawei’s Carrier Business Group generated 232.3 billion yuan in annual revenue, a 21% increase compared to 2014, with the company attributing most of the growth to the widespread rollout of LTE networks.
The vendor’s Enterprise Business Group generated 27.6 billion yuan in revenue last year, surging 44% year-over-year. Huawei’s enterprise business experienced rapid growth in the public safety, finance, transportation and energy sectors.
