Telecom
Lead India: The number of LTE small cells sold (127,000) will surpass the number
of LTE macrocells, forecast at 113,000, as early as 2014, due to changing
cellular network paradigms.
These changing cellular network paradigms are driving a
shift in the architecture of base stations from traditional macrocells to
distributed base stations and toward the growing use of small cell base
stations, according to ABI Research.
The research firm predicts that operators will initially
deploy small cell equipment as in fills on the pico and microcell layers, but
will quickly transition to deploying them as a fundamental part of a network
rollout.
However, LTE base station revenues will continue to be
dominated by macro base station revenue with small cell revenue of $1.09
billion representing only 5.2 percent of the total revenue of $20.86 billion in
2014 and growing to $4.44 billion or 23.9 percent of the total $18.60 billion
LTE base station market by 2016.
These base station baseband SoCs are among the most complex
ICs on the market today and raise the bar in terms of complexity,” said Nick
Marshall, principal analyst, networks.
The study reveals that the primary drivers for this
transition are the increasing data traffic demand and the OPEX and CAPEX cost
savings inherent in deploying small cell equipment.
Equipment manufacturers have been quick to respond to
this shift in RAN architecture. Ericsson acquired BelAir networks as part of
its HetNet initiative, Nokia Siemens Networks announced Flexi Zone, Alcatel-Lucent
continues to expand its lightRadio portfolio and Huawei has announced its
AtomCell products.
Similarly, semiconductor suppliers are also positioning
themselves to participate in this market with TI, Freescale, Cavium, Mindspeed,
and DesignArt among the manufacturers offering new base station-on-a-chip SoCs.
Recently, Infonetics
said small cell market will be worth about $2.1 billion in 2016. During the
period, about 3 million small cells will be shipped. 4G small cells will
overtake 3G small cells by 2015.
