30% of the market within five years will be 3G and 4G wireless subscriptions. Analysts from In-Stat released a report recently detailing the move.
3G held 11% of the market last year although this is set to rise; fast. In-Stat believe that by 2013, the 30% mark will be reached, this in line with the networks moving over from 3G to 4G. By the end of this year, we are likely to see more 4G products appearing.
In-Stat expects mobile WiMAX to be attractive in developing countries and remote locations in which fixed broadband networks are not yet deployed. They feel that it is not clear whether WiMAX will be competitive in locations with existing 3G cell and fixed broadband networks however, as for the current trends, Daryl Schoolar of In-Stat says, “the WiMAX equipment heavy weights of Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Motorola and Samsung are benefitting from the trend. Other vendors to watch include Cisco, Huawei and ZTE.”
The recent research by In-Stat found the following:
- 802.16e, the mobile standard for WiMAX, has been mainly deployed for fixed and nomadic services. Clearwire, Korea Telecom, and UQ of Japan are among a few notable exceptions that are embracing 802.16e for mobile data applications.
- There were 132 announced deployments in the fourth quarter of 2008, consisting of 95 HSPA, 18 WCDMA, 12 mobile WiMAX, six CDMA EV-DO, and one TD SCDMA.
- Based on the contract award activity over the past few quarters, In-Stat expects most of the deployments through new live networks to be WiMAX and HSPA. In-Stat has seen a significant slowdown in contracts for WCDMA and CDMA EV-DO equipment.
