Mobile Infrastructure Market Hits $11.4Bn in Q2

Driven by strong 3G WCDMA capacity projects in EMEA and unabated LTE activity in China, the global macrocell mobile infrastructure market was up 2 percent in the 2nd quarter of 2015 (2Q15) from the prior quarter, and up 2 percent year over year, according to the IHS Infonetics.

"This time around, W-CDMA alone pulled the 2G/3G market out of the dumps and contributed to the growth of the whole mobile infrastructure market. Substantial 3G deployments took place in Brazil, India, the Middle East, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam," said Stéphane Téral, research director for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at IHS.

"Brazil kicked off a massive 2G GSM to 3G W-CDMA migration, and Thailand has ordered mobile operators to shut down their GSM network to re-use the spectrum for LTE," Téral said.

Mobile Infrastructure Market Highlights
In 2Q15, the worldwide macrocell mobile infrastructure market totaled $11.4 billion
LTE revenue was essentially flat (+1 percent) in 2Q15 from 1Q15, but grew 10 percent from the year-ago 2nd quarter
IHS believes LTE will peak at $23 billion in 2015 and then start to decline as a result of diminishing rollouts worldwide
422 commercial LTE networks have been launched as of July 2015, 363 of which are of the FDD (frequency division duplex) variety
Ericsson and Huawei share the LTE infrastructure market share lead in 2Q15, each claiming just over 20 percent
Mobile infrastructure software is forecast by IHS to grow at a 5-year (2014-2019) compound annual growth rate of 8 percent