FALLS CHURCH, Va.-Boosted by continued deployments of third-generation networks, wireless network infrastructure providers are expected to see sales jump more than 66 percent during the next several years from $60.7 billion in 2004 to more than $100 billion in 2011, according to a report from market research firm Telecom Trends International Inc.
The firm cautioned that the yearly increase will slow from 23.9 percent in 2004 to 9.3 percent this year with a compound annual growth rate of 7.4 percent through 2011.
“Falling equipment prices are spurring deployments in those regions of the world that have lacked mobile access,” said Naqi Jaffery, president and chief analyst at Telecom Trends. “At the same time, the need for higher speeds is driving the rapid deployment of 3G networks in industrialized nations.”
The report noted that Tier 1 vendors-including L.M. Ericsson, Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG-garnered 49 percent of revenues last year, while Tier 2 vendors-including Motorola Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Alcatel Althsom-accounted for 33 percent of revenues. The remaining revenues were shared among a handful of smaller vendors, including NEC Corp., Fujitsu Group, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., LG Electronics Co. Ltd., Huawei Technologies Inc. and ZTE Corp.
Despite the continued domination by Tier 1 and 2 vendors, Telecom Trends said smaller vendors are beginning to emerge on the global scene. Those vendors have traditionally been limited to regional markets in Japan, Korea and China, but are “staking out a claim to leadership in next-generation networks,” the firm said.
