Femtocell shipments were up 66% in the final quarter of 2012, and this year is expected to be big as production and deployment of LTE femtocells ramp up, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
Infonetics reported that the global femtocell market, which includes 2G, 3G and “4G” products, grew 66% between the third quarter and fourth quarter of 2012. For the full year, the market totaled $425 million, an increase of 21% over 2011. However, Infonetics said that “4G” femtocell revenue is growing at a five-year annual compound growth rate of 165% for the period of 2012-2017.
The top three market share leaders are Airvana, Samsung and Cisco/Ip.access.
“Femtocell sales are up for the third straight quarter and on a year-over-year basis, though growth to this point is modest for a market that’s still in evolution,” said Richard Webb, Infonetics’ directing analyst for microwave and carrier Wi-Fi. While per-unit price is dropping and shipment volumes are rising, he said, “neither has happened fast enough to drive a more rapid acceleration in adoption to date.
“That said, we believe femtocells have sufficient market drivers and support among operators to sustain continuous annual revenue and unit growth through at least 2017, starting with a very big 2013, driven by strong 3G femto sales and fast-ramping “4G” femtos,” Webb added.
For more perspective on small cells, take a look at these RCR Wireless interviews with Small Cell Forum Chairman Gordon Mansfield, on the state of the small cell market as well as AT&T‘s small cells initiative.
Ruckus Wireless announced a new Wi-Fi wall switch for higher speed, multi-band Wi-Fi designed for hotels and resorts. The company said that the five-star Mandarin Oriental New York hotel has been one of the first testers for the ZoneFlex 7055 Wi-Fi wall switch in hundreds of its guest rooms. The inconspicuous, low-profile white box offers simultaneous operation of 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi with wireless meshing.
Aerohive, which focuses on cloud-based enterprise networking and controller-less Wi-Fi, is now selling two of its enterprise Wi-Fi access points via Apple online stores throughout Europe, enabling bring-your-own-device or corporate deployments of Apple iOS and Mac-devices.
The company also has expanded its cloud-networking capabilities to several new switches and network management systems for enterprises.
I wrote last week about airlines are expected to become the largest mobile advertiser, and they are expanding their in-flight Wi-Fi offerings. Gogo has satellite-enabled Wi-Fi hotspots on more than 1,800 domestic aircraft, and the company offered up some recent analysis of the devices that wireless customers use to connect to its hotspots. It turns out that fully 84% of them are Apple devices. But, the company’s chief commercial officer said that Android devices have made big gains in the past two years.
The use of tablets, smartphones and laptops to access in-flight Wi-Fi were almost evenly split: 35% used tablets, 33% used laptops and 32% used smartphones. Among smartphone users, 73% were on an iPhone, 26% used an Android device, and BlackBerry and Windows-based devices made up less than 1% of the devices used.
“Apple continues to dominate when it comes to the flying public; however, Android devices have seen significant gains in the past two years, increasing from 3.2% of the operating systems used to connect through Gogo in 2011 to 16%,” said Ash Eididrawi, Gogo’s chief commercial officer.
Gogo said that the data was collected from user surveys and internal data compiled from its daily average connections of more than 35,000 on average. Survey participants reported that they were using their wireless devices for activities that included surfing the Internet, checking e-mail, using social networking, and checking out weather, entertainment and directions at their final destination. Business travelers were busily checking their work e-mail and finalizing reports.
