LTE RAN Infrastructure Market on Upswing

LTE Base Station Market to Reach $13 Billion in Sales by 2016

Maravedis Research :

MONTREAL, Canada, June 7, 2011

- As LTE contract awards, deployments and subscriber base growth accelerate, all RAN vendors are poised for growth in the 4G market according to the latest issue of the 4Ggear™ Quarterly Report from Maravedis. "Benefitting from a generally more positive environment in 2010 and 2011 than in 2009, our research found that all infrastructure vendors are getting a piece of the LTE pie," commented lead author Fernando Donoso, Senior Analyst. "However, Ericsson above all has gained a head start in real-world LTE deployment and operations expertise, thanks to their position in Verizon's and MetroPCS' LTE networks - the only truly commercial-scale networks worldwide" he continued.

Everything is not rosy for the Swedish vendor. Maravedis' in-depth analysis of Huawei and Nokia-Siemens networks showed that both have the potential to challenge the world number 1 wireless infrastructure vendor in LTE, thanks to their advanced base station architectures, increasingly sophisticated end-to-end solutions, and the impressive number of LTE contracts both companies have succeeded in accumulating. Additional Research Findings: Maravedis forecasts that the worldwide LTE market will rise from approximately $1.5 billion USD in 2011, to over $13 billion in 2016, including both FDD and TDD equipment. LTE shipments so far have consisted 100% of macro cell base stations. All major RAN vendors have introduced distributed macro base stations using centralized baseband processing - so-called baseband farms. Maravedis expects commercial small cell base station deployments to begin in 2012.

"We see distributed macro base stations and pico cells bringing the vision of heterogeneous networks into reality in 2012" added Adlane Fellah, Research Director. "But operators may allocate common budgets for all small cell deployments, regardless of technology, so the competition between pico cells, femto cells, and carrier Wi-Fi is likely to become fierce."

Huawei Sues ZTE, So does Ericsson

Welp, the pie seems to be getting smaller so everyone’s on everyone else’s throats. Bon appetit

Huawei sues ZTE for patent infringement in Europe

April 29, 2011 — 12:22pm ET By Paul Rasmussen

In a surprise move Huawei sued its fellow Chinese vendor ZTE in the European courts for patent and trademark infringement. Specifically, Huawei accused ZTE of flouting patents it holds relating to data cards and LTE technology.
According to Huawei, the company has started legal action in Germany, France and Hungary with the aim of stopping ZTE from using Huawei patents and trademarks. ZTE is charged with branding some of its data cards with the Huawei brand.
Song Liuping, Huawei's chief legal officer, was reported by the Financial Times as wanting to resolve the dispute through negotiations. However, suggestions to decide the matter out of court using cross-licensing had not provoked a substantive response.
ZTE's reaction to this move was surprise and puzzlement, but it also made plain that it rejected the allegations and threatened to instigate legal action itself. ZTE on Friday sued Huawei in China fore infrnging on patents it holds for LTE.
In a statement carried by the Financial Times, ZTE said: "ZTE Corporation is astonished that Huawei Technologies has taken these legal actions. As a company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, ZTE respects and adheres to international intellectual property laws and regulations without reservation, and absolutely rejects that there has been any patent and trademark infringement."
It also noted: "ZTE is always willing to negotiate on issues in good faith, but will definitely take vigorous legal action in situations like this to protect its interests and those of its customers worldwide."
However, a report carried by AFP said that Huawei had recently made public images of a ZTE-branded data card using a Huawei-registered trademark and patented design.
Earlier this month, Ericsson started legal procedures against ZTE in the UK, Germany and Italy over alleged infringement of patents for 2G and 3G technologies. Ericsson said that it spent four years attempting to resolve the issue with ZTE with no results.