The number of cellular base stations will grow over 10% in 2009, reports In-Stat.

WCDMA (GSM) base stations will make up the lion’s share of all base station shipments worldwide, accounting for about 50% of the total base station revenue. By 2013, In-Stat forecasts that the percent that WCDMA contributes to total base station revenue will exceed 70% and LTE base stations will account for another 20% of the total.

WCDMA/HSPA base stations will be the work horses of wireless data networks, says In-Stat. WCDMA will gain the most subscribers, with CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA taking the distant second and third positions.

China’s three big carriers invested US$15 billion in the first three quarters of 2009 for their 3G rollouts and attracted nearly 10 million 3G customers between them by the end of October, according to data released by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

In January 2009 MIIT assigned licenses for 3 different third-generation mobile phone standards to three carriers, prompting $41 billion in spending on new equipment. The Chinese-developed standard, TD-SCDMA, was assigned to China Mobile, the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers. Licences for two existing 3G standards, WCDMA and CDMA-2000, were assigned to China Unicom and China Telecom, respectively.

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• From 2008 to 2013, total base station revenue is forecast to decrease by almost 3% CAGR. Not only do base stations continue to drop in price, but also the mix of base stations is changing. Smaller base stations are being deployed, and many more LTE base stations are forecast to ship. LTE base stations are significantly cheaper than WCDMA base stations and this will account for much in the way of decreased base station revenue going forward.
• While there is no growth for GSM in areas that are transitioning to WCDMA, there is growth of GSM subscribers in Africa, India, China, and Latin and South America. Still, In-Stat believes that GSM base station shipments will decline every year going forward.
• The fastest base station technology to grow, in terms of compound annual growth rate is TD-SCDMA, but this can be a bit misleading, because TD-SCDMA is a new technology recently licensed as a 3G technology in China and the technology didn’t exist much before 2007.
• LTE is rolling out! The majority of the committed operators have roll-outs scheduled for 2012 and 2013. In the US, Verizon is in the process of deploying LTE with Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent equipment, Alcatel-Lucent supplies most of their existing CDMA equipment. Verizon has said that it hopes to have 20–30 markets with operating LTE by the end of 2010, with more in 2011, and an LTE smartphone as well in 2011.

A TDD version of LTE, mostly driven by China Mobile, is currently being trialed in China by multiple vendors. Combined (TDD and FDD) chipsets in subscriber devices will make it easier to roam across TDD and FDD networks, but it’s still uncertain where and how TD-LTE will be deployed in other countries.

Revenue from cellular services hit $624 billion in 2008 (up 13% from 2007), and is expected to top $877 billion by 2010.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 9:39 am.