New Forecast Shows LTE Macro and Small Cell RAN Market to Exceed $24 Billion by 2019

Mobile data traffic has just about doubled every year since 2008 when the smartphone market started accelerating. Equipment suppliers continue to push the technology envelope to ensure service providers can manage the exponential data growth and improve speed, coverage, capacity and most importantly the quality of their networks.

The Dell’Oro Group is a firm specializing in strategic analysis in the networking and telecommunications industries. The company publishes quarterly market research reports. It publishes mobile radio access network (RAN) quarterly reports containing in-depth market-level and detailed vendor market share information on markets that include base transceiver station (BTS), node B (Macro and Small Cells), base station controller (BSC) and radio network controllers (RNC).

A radio access network is part of a mobile telecommunication system, which implements a radio access technology. Conceptually, it resides between a device – such as a mobile phone, a computer, or any remotely controlled machine – and provides connection with its core network.

Its latest quarterly report was recently published and it shows strong growth in the LTE and small cells market. The speculation is that in just four years the LTE macro and small cell RAN market is going to surpass the $24 billion mark.

This should not come as a surprise as we live in a mobile world where everyone is connected all the time on a variety of different devices. On a worldwide basis, the deployment of LTE networks is growing and spreading every day. In turn, people want to take advantage of the fact that they can access more data at a quicker rate.

This is something that cannot be accomplished through 2G and 3G technology, so it is also not surprising that these two technologies are on the decline. However, the Dell’Oro Group believes that the strong LTE and small cells growth will offset the decline.

According to the report, the top LTE macro and small cell RAN vendors for the third quarter 2014 were Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia. Intriguingly, indications are that the market was expected to grow at a strong pace last year and decline this year and next before it stabilizes. Overall, this will lead to the LTE RAN market doubling by 2019 as compared to 2013. On the other hand, the forecast is that the WCDMA RAN market will be cut in half over the same time period.

Stefan Pongratz, who is an analyst for the Dell'Oro Group, explained that "Although WCDMA will likely remain the dominant end-user technology even through the end of this forecast period, it is clear at this point that the success of LTE has impacted both service providers' WCDMA/LTE rollout strategies, and the overall 3G market. Service providers are realizing that there is more to LTE than the theoretical performance difference between HSPA+ and LTE Release 8 and as a result, more service providers are revisiting their overall MBB strategies. Initially the strategy shift would be mostly confined to advanced markets. But with the cost of terminals coming down, the phenomenon that transpired in many advanced markets will likely be replicated in other markets as well, impacting WCDMA macro and small cell deployments."