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Mobile & Wireless
Analyst Report
Infonetics Research details lackluster mobile infrastructure market performance
'Brutal' first quarter for 2010
by Infonetics Research
According to Stéphane Téral, Infonetics' principal analyst for mobile infrastructure, "It was a brutal first quarter for the mobile infrastructure market, with all segments down, marked by the absence of 3G rollouts in China, prolonged weakness in Latin America and Africa, and a continued pause in GSM upgrades and modernization."
"On the bright side," Téral adds, "we are seeing sustainable 3G upgrades continuing in North America and Western Europe, and W-CDMA and CDMA 2000 radio access network equipment revenues, while down sequentially, are up over the first quarter of 2009. The 3G W-CDMA journey has begun, and as a result we expect to see a bump in the RAN equipment market, including an impressive remote radio head ramp-up as a bridge to LTE, and significant activity in the packet core segment. At some point, likely in the next year or so, GSM investments will have to kick in after so long a pause."
Infonetics reports all segments in the 2G and 3G mobile infrastructure market, including radio access network (RAN), mobile switching subsystem (MSS), packet core, and home location register (HLR) equipment, were down in 1Q10, with combined revenue dropping 19.5% sequentially to US$8.8 billion. While the GSM equipment market showed some signs of stabilization in 4Q09, it took a further plunge in 1Q10, down 37% sequentially and down 47% compared to a year ago.
Infonetics claims Cisco, with the integration of Starent Networks, has become a serious contender in the mobile packet core segment, which is now a race between Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Cisco. On the vendor front for the overall market, Ericsson remains strong, Nokia Siemens Networks is recovering, and Alcatel-Lucent is back.
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