Samsung is tipped to steal Ericsson’s crown as the leading supplier of LTE base stations in Asia Pacific by the year-end.
Research firm NPD In-Stat estimates Samsung will have deployed over 10,000 LTE base stations in the region by end-2011, however the bulk of its contract wins are in its home market, compared to Ericsson’s trend towards region-wide wins.
In-Stat believes Samsung, Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, NEC, NSN and ZTE have captured 94% of the market in 2011. The firm predicts Huawei will take the top spot by 2015, but will be closely marked by Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE, which will each account for around 10% of the region's LTE base station shipments.
The market for LTE evolved packet core, router and gateway equipment is less close-run, with Alcatel-Lucent dominating with one third of deployments in 2010. But while the researchers expect Alcatel-Lucent to maintain the top spot through 2015, its dominance will weaken significantly.