CALIFORNIA, USA: Mobile infrastructure market revenues declined 13 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to $10 billion.

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This is according to a report by Dell’Oro Group, a networking and telecommunications industries analyst firm.

The report indicates the market contraction was a result of steep declines in the GSM market, which more than offset a nearly 50 percent growth of the WCDMA market.

Scott Siegler, senior analyst, Mobile Infrastructure research, Dell’Oro Group, said: “Although 3G spending by China Mobile and China Unicom, which drove the market in the first half of the year, came to a halt in the second half of last year, the massive growth in data traffic resulted in operators worldwide heavily investing in their 3G networks."

“To keep pace with the strong demand, mobile data traffic is putting on their networks, operators are investing in both the expansion of their network footprints with new Node B deployments, as well as adding additional capacity to their existing footprint," he adds.

"We expect that growth in mobile data traffic will double in 2010 and forecast operators to deploy over 40 percent more Node B’s this year,” continued Siegler.

Although the WCDMA and WiMAX markets are forecast to realize double-digit growth during 2010 and initial LTE revenue is expected in the second half of this year, the steep declines in the GSM and CDMA markets will result in 2010 total market revenue being flat with 2009.