New Report Foresees Small Cells Market Hitting $10 Billion by 2018

Small cells have been getting a lot of attention lately. Back in October 2013, Infonetics Research released its small cell report entitled “Small Cell Mobile Backhaul Equipment.” The author of last year’s report, Michael Howard, said, “Outdoor small cells or, more accurately, low-power cells, are an exciting new expansion of mobile networking, but they come with challenging backhaul issues. As a result, deployments of outdoor small cells are modest right now, as mobile operators sort things out and test, trial and select technologies, products and vendors. But that’s about to change, and fast.”

According to another Infonetics’ report, deployments of outdoor small cells will be driven largely by mobile operators' need to enhance saturated macro-cellular networks in urban, high-traffic areas and improve the mobile broadband experience. The report also estimates that by 2015 outdoor small cells will see significant growth.

On April 1 2014, Mobile Experts released the results of a detailed market study analysis of small cells in a 94 page report entitled “Small Cells and Low Power Base Stations.” The market study includes analysis on multiple types of small cells. It also takes a look at small base stations which have often been referred to as microcells or picocells. These utilize traditional radio access network (RAN) architecture. In addition, the study also includes a detailed analysis of low power remote radio head applications.

Mobile Experts is a company that provides market analysis for the mobile infrastructure and mobile handset markets. Research topics center on technology introduction for radio frequency (RF) and communications innovation. Joe Madden is principle analyst at Mobile Experts.

In the small cell report he explained, "During 2013, the deployment of 200,000 small cells in Asia has validated the accuracy of our forecasting over the past five years.  This year, we've added revenue analysis and more quantitative 'trigger points' into our forecast based on real-world examples in Korea. We've interviewed more than 30 mobile operators and 40 suppliers to collect data for this market study. Our relationship with the Small Cell Forum has also helped us greatly in gathering high-level information from mobile operators.  By collecting detailed shipment and deployment information, we are able to present a forecast with specific data by region, by frequency band, by mode, by application type, and many other dimensions."

The Small Cell Forum is an organization that supports the wide scale adoption of small cells. Its mission is to accelerate small cell adoption to change the shape of mobile networks and maximize the potential of the mobile Internet.

Some of the information that the 94 page report deals with include the following:

• System diagrams illustrating expected Small Cell architectures;
• Shipment forecasts for microcells, picocells, femtocells, and RRH units;
• Pricing and revenue forecasts for each type of small cell;
• Cumulative shipment and installed base projections for small cells;
• Forecasts for multimode, adaptable mode, and single mode small cells;
• Forecasted adoption of integrated Wi-Fi with small cells; and
• Analysis of the balance between C-RAN, DAS, Wi-Fi, and Small Cells.

The Mobile Experts forecast details of market growth for nine categories of small cells and low power remote radio head (RRH). The expectation is that in just four more years the market will reach $10 billion.