Telecom Lead India: Airvana has regained its number one
position in femtocell equipment market in the first quarter of 2012.
Airvana has overtaken Samsung to become the number one player.
Airvana grew thanks to strong shipments in N. America.
Samsung is the second largest player. Alcatel-Lucent and
Cisco/ip.access are in third and fourth positions, respectively.
(Please see the chart)
Following a 20 percent surge the previous quarter, global
2G and 3G femtocell revenue dipped 2.7 percent in 1Q12, even as femtocell unit
shipments grew 14.0 percent.
Between 2011 and 2016, the share of consumer femtocells
may shrink from 74 percent of the total market to 30 percent, while public
space femtocell share triples to 25 percent, and enterprise femtocell revenue
share grows the most, making up almost half the global market by 2016.
More than 45 operators are now live with commercial
femtocell deployments.
The Small Cell Forum reports that as of December 2011
there are over 3 million active femtocells privately in homes and offices, and
publicly in metropolitan and rural environments.
A slight dip in 3G femtocell revenue per unit held back
overall revenue growth in the femtocell market in the first part of the year,
but price erosion is an important factor that will drive long-term volume
growth,” said Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload and
mobile broadband devices at Infonetics Research.
Femtocell price erosion is due to a combination of
factors, including new component suppliers entering the fray, manufacturing
efficiencies, and the continuing scale-up of femtocell shipment volumes. We
remain cautiously optimistic that femtocells have sufficient market drivers and
support among operators to sustain year-over-year growth through 2016,” Webb
added.
