Despite a poor worldwide economy, demand for smartphones, regular phones, and wireless broadband services continues to drive the base station market, according to In-Stat. The number of newly deployed macro cellular base stations will grow over 10% in 2009.
Of new macro cellular base station shipments, WCDMA base station shipments will make up the lion's share of all base station shipments worldwide, accounting for about 50% of the total base station revenue. By 2013, In-Stat forecasts that the percent that WCDMA contributes to total base station revenue will exceed 70% and LTE base stations will account for another 20% of the total.
"WCDMA/HSPA base stations will be the work horses of wireless data networks," says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. "Many operators, worldwide, are in the process of rolling out, or enhancing, their current CDMA networks, including a very large rollout of CDMA by China Unicom. China Unicom was awarded the WCDMA contract to provide services in China. WCDMA will gain the most subscribers, with CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA taking the distant second and third positions." Article