New sales figures from Ericsson show that Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has been the most lucrative market for its small cell Radio Dot System to date, as the vendor announced it has hit a milestone of 100 operator customers for the system.
Figures released by the company as part of the announcement show that 44 per cent of Radio Dot System sales to date have been to operators in the EMEA territory. Asia Pacific is the next largest market, accounting for 39 per cent of sales to date, with North and South America next in line with 17 per cent.
Ericsson's Radio Dots are small mobile broadband antennas that weigh around 300 grams and are designed to boost indoor mobile coverage. The infrastructure company launched the small cell product in the fourth quarter of 2014, and has previously explained that the approach is a cost effective means of quickly boosting indoor capacity and network performance.
The company said demand for reliable indoor coverage is high, citing research by its ConsumerLab division that shows around 90 per cent of mobile users' time is spent indoors, but that less than a third (30 per cent) of smartphone users enjoy sufficient voice quality, coverage and reliability.
Arun Bansal, SVP and head of Business Unit Radio at Ericsson, said the Radio Dot System is "improving indoor app coverage for smartphone users around the world". The performance of existing antennas in the system will be improved by "simple software upgrades" he added.
Ericsson said 77 of the operators that have deployed its small cell system have gone live with LTE, and that close to 10 per cent of those operators run dual-mode WCDMA and LTE on the same Dots.
While EMEA is the dominant territory for Radio Dot System sales to-date, Ericsson revealed that Sichuan Mobile -- western China's largest mobile operator -- is its 100th customer.
The vendor scored its first win in China in August when it announced China Telecom had deployed the small cell set-up. A month earlier, the vendor announced that MTS was the first Russian operator to deploy the set-up, with Etisalat also deploying the Radio Dot System in Egypt in March.
For more:
- see this Ericsson announcement
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