WCDMA Gaining Traction, Poised to Have a Strong 2008

(Business News & Technology News, 25 Feb 2008)

Worldwide mobile infrastructure market grew more than $850 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 over the previous quarter, according to market research firm Dell'Oro Group. While GSM continued to be the dominant contributor to this growth, WCDMA is finally gaining traction and is poised to have a very strong 2008.

"All signs point to a breakout year for the WCDMA market in 2008," says Scott Siegler, Analyst of Mobility Infrastructure research at Dell'Oro Group. "First, the fourth quarter recorded a record number of Node B shipments, 70 percent more than the year ago quarter. Second, nearly 90 percent of all WCDMA networks have been upgraded to HSDPA. This is a critical point because these networks now provide average practical download speeds of nearly ten times those of GSM EDGE networks. It is these faster download speeds that will provide incentive for subscribers to transition to WCDMA services in order to support their experiences with data intensive applications such as YouTube, music downloads and photo sharing."

In its new study, Dell'Oro Group reported that Huawei is on its way to becoming the number three largest player in the WCDMA market. By more than doubling its WCDMA revenue over the third quarter, Huawei is set to surpass Alcatel-Lucent's WCDMA revenue in the near future and sit beyond the two largest players—Ericsson and Nokia Siemens.

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