WCDMA Equipment Up 12% in 3Q; Nokia Siemens Leads in Mobile Switch Subsystems

After ramping up in 2Q08 in large part due to Beijing Olympics preparations, the worldwide radio access network (RAN) equipment market slid 6% to $9.6 billion in 3Q08 on sharp declines in the CDMA segment, reports market research firm Infonetics Research.

Infonetics says that while most segments of the market declined this quarter, the W-CDMA equipment segment, including base transceiver stations (Node Bs) and base stations controllers (radio network controllers, or RNCs) increased 12% in 3Q08, and is up 19% year-over-year.

"Growth in the W-CDMA segment is due to sustained deployments in various regions, ranging from smartphone- and datacard-driven upgrades in North America and Europe to simple 3G rollouts in other regions. Although the global economic turmoil is likely to put more pressure on the already tough RAN market, Russia, hit by a major currency crisis, is the only country where major mobile operators have announced the suspension of all network equipment orders. Meanwhile, mobile packet core and mobile softswitching continue to be the bright spots of the mobile infrastructure market, driven by a migration to IP. All major operators told us they would stick with their mobile broadband plans, and therefore continue to beef up their mobile core networks," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure at Infonetics.

Other highlights from the report:

• Ericsson retains the top position for overall RAN equipment revenue market share in 3Q08, followed by Nokia Siemens, Alcatel- Lucent, Huawei, and Nortel
• Nokia Siemens ekes past Huawei in 3Q08 to take the #1 position in the mobile switching subsystem segment, which includes mobile switching centers (MSCs) and mobile softswitching (soft MSCs and wireless media gateways)
• Year-over-year from 3Q07 to 3Q08, the GSM equipment segment is up slightly, driven by strong deployments in every region except Western Europe
• Sales of home location registers (HLRs), centralized databases that store mobile subscriber information and profiles, are down 5% sequentially, but up 16% year-over-year, driven by network upgrades and new network deployments
• The number of worldwide mobile subscribers hit 3.3 billion in 2007 and is still expected to grow to 5.2 billion by 2011, despite the current economic situation

Posted to the site on 10th December 2008