Driven by strong 3G W-CDMA capacity projects in EMEA and unabated LTE activity in China, the global macrocell mobile infrastructure market was up 2% in the second quarter of 2015 (2Q15) from the prior quarter, and up 2% year-over-year, according to the IHS Infonetics Mobile Infrastructure Equipment report from IHS.
“This time around, W-CDMA alone pulled the 2G/3G market out of the dumps and contributed to the growth of the whole mobile infrastructure market. Substantial 3G deployments took place in Brazil, India, the Middle East, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam,” says Stephane Teral, research director for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at IHS.
“Brazil kicked off a massive 2G GSM to 3G W-CDMA migration, and Thailand has ordered mobile operators to shut down their GSM network to re-use the spectrum for LTE,” says Teral.
Mobile infrastructure market highlights include:
- In 2Q15, the worldwide macrocell mobile infrastructure market totaled $11,4-billion
- LTE revenue was essentially flat (+1%) in 2Q15 from 1Q15, but grew 10% from the year-ago second quarter
- IHS believes LTE will peak at $23-billion in 2015 and then start to decline as a result of diminishing rollouts worldwide
- 422 commercial LTE networks have been launched as of July 2015, 363 of which are of the FDD (frequency division duplex) variety
- Ericsson and Huawei share the LTE infrastructure market share lead in 2Q15, each claiming just over 20%
- Mobile infrastructure software is forecast by IHS to grow at a five-year (2014–2019) compound annual growth rate of 8%