Record Year for GSM Rollouts, More to Come with 3G Buildouts in China, India

Published on: 6th March 2009

Market research firm Infonetics Research released the fourth quarteredition of its Mobile Infrastructure and Subscribers report and noted that the worldwide mobile network infrastructure equipment market grew 6% to US$50.8 billion in 2008 over 2007, and will continue to grow in 2009 and 2010.

"The large majority of mobile operators have healthy balance sheets, so the global economic turmoil roiling many markets is not likely to have a significant impact on the mobile network infrastructure market, with a few exceptions in hard-hit regions mainly due to currency devaluation. Traffic growth remains unabated and many networks are fairly loaded. China is in the midst of massive 3G rollouts, and India will soon follow, fueling the market in 2009," said Stéphane Téral, Principal Analyst, Mobile and FMC Infrastructure, Infonetics Research.

On the financial front, currency appreciation is having a significant impact on vendors in this space, with the US and Hong Kong dollars, Indian rupee, yuan/renminbi, and yen all up; only Ericsson, which reports in Swedish kroner, was not significantly affected.

Declines are also expected in the overall market starting in 2011, led by losses in the behemoth RAN segment due to near coverage saturation and price pressure from operators

The 3G GSM network equipment market jumped 32% in 4Q08 over 3Q08 and will continue growing in 2009, driven by massive 3G buildouts in China and India, while the emerging mobile packet core and mobile softswitching segments continue to be the brightest spots of the mobile infrastructure market, driven by an unstoppable migration to IP.

Ericsson gained market share in 4Q08, strengthening its #1 position for overall RAN equipment revenue, ahead of Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Nortel. Huawei snagged the #1 spot from Nokia Siemens in the fast-growing mobile switching subsystem market in 4Q08, putting them in the lead for 2008 overall.

 

Tags: [3g]  [nokia]  [huawei]  [alcatel-lucent]  [ericsson]  [nortel]  [ran]  [infonetics research]  [fmc]  [gsm]  [siemens]  [nokia siemens]  [packet core]  [China]  [India]