WCDMA Equipment Up 21% in 2Q, Driven by 3G Rollouts and Device Upgrades

­Ericsson has increased its macrocell RAN equipment revenue in 2Q09 with a boost from China Unicom's W-CDMA deployments, retaining its top market share spot reports Infonetics Research. However, Huawei and ZTE also increased their RAN equipment revenue at the same time.

"Solid W-CDMA, TD-SCDMA, and CDMA2000 rollouts in China, combined with a resurrection in North America, drove worldwide macro RAN equipment revenue to $9.9 billion in 2Q09, up 13% sequentially. Meanwhile, the GSM plunge was more pronounced and spread out across regions. As a result, stellar gains in W-CDMA and CDMA2000 deployments were not enough to pull the overall RAN market into positive growth territory," explains Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research's principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure.

W-CDMA equipment revenue grew 21% between 1Q09 and 2Q09, and is up 90% year-over-year, mainly due to China's 3G rollouts and smartphone- and data card-driven upgrades in North America and Europe. CDMA2000 equipment revenue is also up, by 46% in 2Q09 from 1Q09.

Mobile packet core equipment continues to be the brightest spot of the mobile infrastructure market, driven by an unstoppable migration to IP triggered by the rise of smartphone and data card usage.

Worldwide home location register (HLR) revenue is up 6% in 2Q09 from 1Q09.

The report added that China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom together deployed 142,000 3G base transceiver stations, accounting for more than half the world's 3G deployments in 1H09, helping China meet it ambitious 3G rollout deployment plans.

Posted to the site on 28th August 2009