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Infonetics Research, a provider of market research and consulting services for the communications industry, has released its fourth quarter (4Q08) Mobile Infrastructure and Subscribers report.

 

"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 Fixed Mobile Convergence (News - Alert) (FMC) Infrastructure at Infonetics Research.

 

The global mobile network infrastructure equipment market which consists of radio access network (RAN), mobile switching subsystem (MSS), mobile packet core network, and home location register        (HLR) equipment, grew 6 percent in 2008 over the previous year and touched $50.8 billion. The report from Infonetics predicts that a similar trend will follow in 2009 and 2010.

 

Excluding Ericsson, all other vendors in the space were visibly affected by currency appreciation. Major currencies such as the US and Hong Kong dollars, Indian rupee, yuan/renminbi, and yen were up impacting the vendors, whereas Ericsson (News - Alert) which reports in Swedish Kroner was shielded.

 

A significant drop is expected in the overall market beginning 2011, mainly attributed to coverage saturation in the heavyweight radio access network (RAN) segment and pricing pressure from operators. There was a record number of GSM roll outs in 2008 which raised the GSM network equipment market overall by 1 percent. The same market saw a good 32 percent quarter on quarter growth taking Q3 and Q4 of 2008, into consideration. This was mainly possible due to massive 3G roll outs in China and India.

 

Emerging technologies in the mobile packet core and mobile softswitching areas driving migration to IP will be the biggest growth drivers for the mobile infrastructure market. The TD-SCDMA equipment market has got a strong head start in China. Ericsson gained the market share in Q4 of 2008 for overall RAN equipment revenue whereas Huawei led the mobile switching subsystem market in Q4 overtaking Nokia Siemens. Global home location register (HLR) revenue saw a 21 percent rise in Q4 of 2008 over Q3.