Market research firm Infonetics says the worldwide 2G and 3G mobile infrastructure market grew 2% in this year's third quarter, to $8.8 billion, this year.
Infonetics' mobile infrastructure report provides worldwide and regional market size, market share, analysis, and forecasts for mobile infrastructure, usage, sales and subscribers.
In its 2010 2G and 3G Mobile Infrastructure and Subscribers market share and forecast report, the firm found that the overall market is still down year-over-year (minus 20.7% from Q3 2009), when the market was inflated by massive 3G rollouts in China.
"As we anticipated more than a year ago, in the third quarter of 2010, the mobile infrastructure market was marked by the start of 2G capacity upgrades and modernisation projects, sustained but slowing 3G activity in North America, and the start of 3G rollouts in India,” says St'ephane T'eral, Infonetics' principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure.
“Despite the misleading '4G' pandemonium in the US, 2G is back in full force and will keep the planet busy for the next few years as global mobile penetration reaches 100%."
All major segments of the market posted sequential gains, the firm reported, including radio access network (RAN), mobile switching subsystem, mobile packet core, and home location register equipment.
Since its peak of $42.5 billion in 2008, annual spending on just RAN equipment consisting of base transceiver stations, base station controllers, and remote radio heads, is dropping almost $10 billion, to an expected $33.4 billion in 2010, says Infonetics.
“The GSM RAN equipment market bounced back in 3Q10, up 12.5% sequentially, led by major 2G capacity upgrades in China and India,” the report states.
According to the findings, Ericsson remains the “King of the Radio” with double the revenue market share of its nearest competitor, Nokia Siemens, for worldwide macrocell RAN equipment
In the mobile packet core equipment segment - in which Ericsson is also number one - the report shows that just three quarters ago the spread between number two, Nokia Siemens and number three, Cisco was about 13.5%; in Q3 the distance between them is only 2%.
The number of mobile subscribers passed the five billion bar in 2010 and is on track to hit six billion between 2012 and 2013, the firm says.
“With the worldwide population now at 6.9 billion, it is very likely that mobile penetration will exceed the global population in the near future.”
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