BANGALORE, INDIA: In 2009, shifts in the mobile infrastructure market made it clear that the world continues to move to 3G and that 3G will be primarily W-CDMA-based, with revenue in all segments of the market declining except W-CDMA RAN and packet core equipment (up 59 percent and 7.4 percent year-over-year, respectively).

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This is according to Infonetics Research's fourth quarter (4Q09) 2G/3G Mobile Infrastructure and Subscribers market share and forecast report.

Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research's principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure, says: "Asia carriers are ramping up their remote radio head gear, typified by NTT DoCoMo’s recent shift toward LTE-ready, RRH-based, distributed W-CDMA architecture, adding even more fuel to the W-CDMA momentum. 3G is the main focus of the mobile arena, and is spreading fast across the GSM world," explains Téral.

Worldwide, the overall 2G and 3G mobile infrastructure market, including radio access network (RAN), mobile switching subsystem (MSS), packet core, and home location register (HLR) equipment, is down nine percent year-over-year (2008 to 2009), from $50.9 billion to $46.5 billion.

Sequential growth in the W-CDMA and mobile packet core segments kept the mobile infrastructure market from tanking in 4Q09, dropping just 1.6 percent from 3Q09.

GSM equipment sales stabilized in 4Q09, down 2.5 percent from 3Q09, but is down 56 percent from a year ago (4Q08) as a result of India’s postponement of a major upgrade and slowdowns in Africa, Central/Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

A new trend is emerging: using remote radio head (RRH) equipment to optimize existing W-CDMA networks to smoothly upgrade to LTE, cutting the need for costly eNodeBs.

With the acquisition of Nortel’s CDMA business, Ericsson captures even more mobile macrocell RAN equipment market share, finishing above the 40 percent bar for 2009.
 
Nokia Siemens Networks takes second and Huawei third for the 2009 calendar year.