"Solid W-CDMA, TD-SCDMA, and CDMA2000 rollouts in China, combined with a resurrection in North America, drove worldwide macro RAN equipment revenue to $9.9 billion in 2Q09, up 13% sequentially. Meanwhile, the GSM plunge was more pronounced and spread out across regions. As a result, stellar gains in W-CDMA and CDMA2000 deployments were not enough to pull the overall RAN market into positive growth territory," explains Stéphane Téral , Infonetics Research 's principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure.

MOBILE INFRASTRUCTURE MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

• Ericsson increased its macrocell RAN equipment revenue in 2Q09 with a boost from China Unicom's W-CDMA deployments, retaining its top market share spot
• Huawei and ZTE also increased their RAN equipment revenue
• Mobile packet core equipment continues to be the brightest spot of the mobile infrastructure market, driven by an unstoppable migration to IP triggered by the rise of smartphone and data card usage
• W-CDMA equipment revenue grew 21% between 1Q09 and 2Q09, and is up 90% year-over-year, mainly due to China's 3G rollouts and smartphone- and data card-driven upgrades in North America and Europe
• CDMA2000 equipment revenue is up 46% in 2Q09 from 1Q09 -- Worldwide home location register (HLR) revenue is up 6% in 2Q09 from 1Q09
• China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom together deployed 142,000 3G base transceiver stations, accounting for more than half the world's 3G deployments in 1H09, helping China meet it ambitious 3G rollout deployment plans
• Mobile subscriber growth continues unabated, mainly driven by the basic need of having a voice service in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), with worldwide mobile subscriber numbers expected to hit 6 billion by 2013

Infonetics' mobile infrastructure report provides worldwide and regional market size, market share, analysis, and forecasts for RAN equipment (BTS, BSC), mobile switching subsystem equipment (mobile switching center, soft MSCs, wireless media gateways), mobile packet core network equipment (GPRS gateway support nodes, serving GPRS support nodes, packet data serving nodes), HLR equipment, and mobile subscribers. Technologies tracked: GSM, W-CDMA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, macrocell, microcell, picocell.

Companies tracked: Alcatel-Lucent, Apertio, Cisco, Ericsson, GENBAND, HP, Huawei, Motorola, Nokia-Siemens, Nortel, Starent Networks, UTStarcom, ZTE, and others.

By Robert Hoskins

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