Base station market contracting, says In-Stat

After many years of rapid growth, the worldwide cellular base station market revenues will decline 22% in 2009, with shipments falling from the high levels of the 3G rollout frenzy of the last few years, reported In-Stat. Declining base station shipments are one clear reason for the revenue decline. However, intense competition from China equipment manufacturers ZTE and Huawei Technologies have pressured base station selling prices, as operators demand that infrastructure manufacturers decrease costs.

"As voice revenues per subscriber drops, base station demand depends on data growth," said Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. "Operators have spent billions on 3G, and are reaping the benefits of increased data revenues. Operators are so worried about not having the fastest wireless network that they will spend billions more on LTE and WiMAX, though not at the spending pace seen with 3G."

According to In-Stat, base stations enabled for LTE will exceed 166,000 by 2013, and new LTE base station revenues in Eastern Europe will be nearly US$700 million in 2013. Deployed WCDMA base stations will exceed one million by 2012., In-Stat added.

The last unit shipments of CDMA2000 1X RTT base stations will occur in 2009, with less than 1,200 new base stations being deployed. All future CDMA base station shipments will be EV-DO. Shipments of new GSM base stations should remain strong for a few more years, In-Stat said.