3G subscriptions to reach 285 million worldwide by year-end
By Vinod Kataria, EDN Asia -- EDN, October 12, 2006
After years of market uncertainty, with investors wringing their hands and restructuring their finances, 3G has finally gained credibility, according to ABI Research. Jake Saunders, the company's Asia-Pacific director, says, "3G subscriptions, including CDMA [code-division multiple access] 2000, are forecast to hit 285 million by the end of 2006. Operators' overall capital expenditure will grow for the fourth year to reach $126.4 billion, and annual 3G-related handset shipments should pull past 300 million."
W-CDMA (wideband CDMA) is starting to pull its weight in the 3G stakes and is expected to overtake CDMA 2000 by about 2012, but CDMA 2000 is not down for the count: It has proved to be an efficient approach. Nevertheless, W-CDMA will continue to keep the pressure on, and, as end users replace their GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) handsets, many will default to purchasing a W-CDMA handset, providing manufacturers with increasing economies of scale.
But not even W-CDMA backers can afford to stand still. TD-SCDMA (time-division-synchronous CDMA) may be taking time to reach commercial reality in China, but Chinese infrastructure vendors, such as Datang Mobile, are re-engineering their technologies to offer a hybrid TD-SCDMA/HSDPA (high-speed-downlink-packet-access) technology that makes the most of both methods. Don't underestimate WiMax, either. These access technologies dictate the overall cost of service delivery and the functions of the value-added services that operators offer. They also determine which camps of vendors—and their upstream- and downstream-component suppliers—will receive the lion's share of the equipment-spending pie. Intangible factors, such as legacy equipment integration, access to towers, back-haul infrastructure, handset lineups, and vendor financing, also enter the equation.
"The exciting prospect is that national markets could be opening up to alternative access technologies more than ever before," says Saunders. "If the vendors of the new alternative 3G+ solutions can demonstrate that they can operate alongside existing 3G and even 2G infrastructures, the opportunities for new entrants or even a few industry veterans, such as Qualcomm and Lucent could suddenly look a lot brighter."
