RAN equipment market down 2% due to slowdowns in N. America and Europe, cutthroat competition in Asia, Latin America, Africa

Market Wire, December, 2007

Worldwide sales of radio access network (RAN) equipment are down 2% to $10 billion in 3Q07, following a 4% increase in 2Q07, according to Infonetics Research's quarterly "Mobile Network Infrastructure Equipment and Subscribers" report (formerly titled "Radio Access Network Equipment").

Meanwhile, the number of mobile subscribers continues to climb, expected to be up 20% year-over-year by the end of 2007, and forecast to reach 4.2 billion worldwide by 2010, the report shows.

"The decline in the RAN market in the third quarter was caused primarily by a slowdown in network upgrades in North America and Europe, and by cutthroat competition in new network deployments that pushed prices down in Asia Pacific, Africa, and Latin America," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure at Infonetics. "In addition, the delay in 3G license issuance in both China and India is exacerbating the already weak 3G infrastructure market."

Although there is no question that the GSM market is holding up with deployments continuing unabated, the report says, current infrastructure pricing structures and gloomy guidance from Ericsson, who lost market share this quarter, will lead to a continued decline in GSM RAN revenue year-over-year.

Other highlights from the report:

--  Worldwide mobile core network equipment sales, including GPRS core
    network and PDSN equipment, are forecast to grow 2% between 2006 and 2007
--  Worldwide sales of home location register (HLR) equipment inched up 1%
    in 3Q07
--  Base transceiver stations (BTS) currently make up more than 3/4 of
    worldwide RAN equipment sales, and base station controllers (BSC) make up
    the remainder; these proportions will change radically beginning in 2Q08
--  Sales of CDMA equipment are up 8%, W-CDMA equipment sales are down 10%
    in 3Q07
--  By 2010, nearly half of the world's mobile subscribers will hail from
    Asia Pacific
--  Asia Pacific accounts for 41% of RAN equipment revenue in 3Q07, EMEA
    for 28%, CALA 16%, and North America 15%
--  Although they lost market share in 3Q07, Ericsson maintains its lead
    in the overall RAN equipment market, followed by Nokia Siemens Networks,
    then Alcatel-Lucent
    

Infonetics' mobile infrastructure report tracks HLR equipment; RAN equipment, including BTS (split by GSM, W-CDMA, CDMA/CDMA2000, microcells, and picocells) and BSC (split by GSM, W-CDMA, and CDMA/CDMA2000); and mobile core network equipment, including GPRS core network equipment split by GPRS gateway support nodes (GGSN) and serving GPRS support nodes (SGSN) and packet data serving nodes (PDSN). The report also tracks mobile subscribers split by 2G/2.5G GSM, 3G W-CDMA, 2G/2.5G CDMA, and 3G CDMA2000.

Forecasts are updated quarterly for all regions. Companies tracked include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, Samsung, Starent, UTStarcom, ZTE, and others.

Download report highlights at www.info.infonetics.com . For sales, contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com or 1 (408) 583-3335.

Infonetics Research ( www.infonetics.com ) is the premier international market research and consulting firm specializing in data networking and telecom. Services include market share and forecasting, end-user survey research, service provider survey research and capex analysis.

Press Contact: Stéphane Téral Principal Analyst - Service Provider VoIP, IMS, and Mobile Infrastructure Infonetics Research (408) 583-3371 Email Contact