Dell'Oro: Record Base Station Shipments, Steep Price Erosion in '08

The worldwide total mobile infrastructure market revenue grew 5 percent in 2008, driven by the nearly doubling and quadrupling of revenue of the WCDMA and WiMAX markets, respectively, according to a recently published report by Dell'Oro Group. The report also shows that despite 30 percent growth and a record number of base station deployments for the combined GSM and CDMA markets, higher than normal price erosion of over 25 percent, resulted in a 10 percent contraction in revenue for these markets.


"The rapid expansion of HSPA networks worldwide beginning in the first quarter of the year was instrumental in driving the growth of the WCDMA market in 2008," stated Scott Siegler, Senior Analyst of Mobile Infrastructure research at Dell'Oro Group. "The true broadband data rates of these upgraded networks, along with the doubling of the HSPA device ecosystem, including smartphones, laptops and mobile internet devices were the primary drivers of the WCDMA market's ramp. The prevalence of flat rate data plans was even greater incentive for 2G subscribers to migrate to 3G subscribers and take advantage of these true mobile broadband networks. The WCDMA subscriber base increased by over 100 million during the year. More HSPA subscribers, with each subscriber accessing substantially more data, drove operators to significantly invest in expanding and upgrading the capacity of their HSPA networks," Siegler added.


Video Topics:


1. What is the current outlook for the mobile infrastructure market?


2. Have LTE schedules been advanced or delayed in the past few months?


3. Will the Digital TV transition delay in the US have any impact on LTE rollouts?


4. How significant is the emerging 3G market in China? Which vendors are well positioned?


5. How will the economic downturn impact the market for mobile broadband?http://www.delloro.com