The Chinese mobile infrastructure market declined 21 percent to $2 billion in the first half of 2013 compared to the same period a year ago, said Infonetics Research.
China Mobile and China Telecom dragged total Capex (capital spending), while China Unicom is ahead of its spending plans.
“For the second time in Chinese mobile spending history, only a third of total budgeted capex was spent in the first half of the year. This is even lower than last year, and half of what the total should be at this time of year,” said Stephane Teral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.
Meanwhile, 2013 is still shaping up as solid year fueled by China Mobile’s TD-LTE rollout for potential commercial service by year’s end and the Chinese government’s awarding of 4G licenses.
China’s LTE market is expected to rise 127 percent year-over-year in 2013.
63 percent of China’s 1.2 billion mobile subscribers are on China Mobile’s GSM/TD-SCDMA network.
Growth in the Japanese mobile infrastructure market slowed to 8 percent in the first half of 2013.
NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank Mobile are currently developing LTE network in Japan.
Japan’s mobile infrastructure market reached $1.7 billion in the first half of 2013, with LTE contributing $1.4 billion of total revenue.
The LTE spending pattern is directly correlated to the 3 Japanese mobile operators’ Capex.
NSN is leading the Japanese radio market, followed by Ericsson and NEC.
NTT Docomo is Japan’s largest mobile operator, with 62 million subscribers, 14 million of which are on its LTE network.
Infonetics forecasts the Japanese mobile infrastructure industry to fall to US$2.6 billion in 2017, a 2012–2017 CAGR of -7.3 percent.
