Fundamental changes in wireless sometimes take place with a bang (the disappearance of AT&T Wireless, the combination of Sprint and Nextel) and sometimes creep in (location-based services, telemetry, etc.).
While the U.S. carrier space is doing some dramatic flips as of late, the worldwide vendor market is quietly changing as old stalwarts like Motorola acquire upstarts to try to regain lost position, and new entrants gain traction-and more importantly, contracts.
Even as U.S. industry salivates over the prospect of winning contracts in China, Chinese vendors are quietly making inroads into the United States and Europe. European and North American companies rule today’s infrastructure business: Ericsson is No. 1, followed by Nokia. The battle for the remaining spots is littered with North American and European-based businesses: Alcatel, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Siemens.
But will it look that way five years from now?
European and U.S. vendors also ruled the handset space for years, but now Korea-based Samsung and LG are serious contenders in the worldwide phone market, holding the No. 2 and No. 5 positions, respectively.
Earlier this month ClearTalk launched services in El Centro, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz., using equipment from Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Huawei (FutureWei in the United States) is determined to be a player outside of China, and it seems to be succeeding.
The privately held company said its foreign sales exceeded domestic Chinese sales for the first time in 2003. Further, Huawei has 66-percent market share in the burgeoning CDMA 450 MHz deployment market. Not bad for a company founded in 1988.
Samsung and LG also planned to be major infrastructure players in the United States, but have yet to make much impact. Nevertheless, you can’t argue with their successes in the handset business.
Will Huawei make a dent in the tough U.S. market? ClearTalk President Glenn Ishihara thinks so: “It’s like sushi and cappuccino. Twenty years ago you couldn’t get it; now you can’t get away from it.”
