Telecom service provider China Mobile will power LTE base station growth by over 130 percent this year, said ABI Research.
The LTE installed base station growth will be fuelled by China Mobile which is officially upgrading its network to TD-LTE and issuing a huge tender for 207,000 base stations.
The year 2013 is set to become a peak year for LTE macro base station deployments, ABI Research said in a statement.
The Asia-Pacific region now becomes the largest market for LTE followed by North America and Western Europe with the regional installed base growing 4X from 2012.
“LTE base station shipments in Asia-Pacific are set to grow over 3X this year,” says Nick Marshall, principal analyst at ABI Research. “LTE macro RAN spending is also set to more than double as LTE expenditures rise to reach almost 50 percent of RAN spending, with Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Solutions, and Networks all set to benefit.”
By 2018, ABI Research expects China to have the largest LTE installed base in the region, and the world, and India to have the second largest – combined these countries will represent over 75 percent of the LTE installed base in Asia-Pacific and Asia-Pacific will represent almost 45 percent of the world’s LTE installed base.