Thursday, 2 October 2008

Cell Base Station Sales Looks Weak This Year, Says In-Stat

According to a research conducted by In-Stat, after a fantastic 2007 for worldwide base station shipments, results for this year look pretty weak.

Many new 3G networks were rolled out in 2007 around the world, and GSM subscriber growth occurred at a fast clip, driven by millions of new subscribers in India, Africa, and China. However, these trends will not prevent total worldwide base station shipments from dropping sharply this year compared to 2007.

Other findings from the report suggest that the WCDMA base station shipments will exceed those of GSM-type base stations by 2011 and 2009 will see a sharp rise in the number of TD-SCDMA base stations shipped. Cellular demand in China and India will keep sales of GSM base stations strong for many years, claimed In-Stat.

"New 3G networks are continuing to be deployed, and some operators like T-Mobile are deploying entirely new WCDMA-type networks," said Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst.

"However, the worldwide economy has been faltering, subscriber GSM growth-even in fast-growing developing areas-is starting to slow, and wireless broadband use, while growing, is not growing fast enough for operators to spawn continued base station growth."