Mobile broadband modems and hotspot router shipments will decline 24 percent in 2014 against 17 percent dip in 2013 to nearly 87 million units, said Strategy Analytics.
The market’s value in 2014 has halved since 2010.
Mobile broadband modems revenues fell 22 percent in 2013 to below $7 billion from below $9 billion in 2012.
Huawei has 45 percent unit share in the all modem market in 2014. Combined with second place ZTE, the top Chinese vendors are still shipping over 80 percent of all mobile broadband modems, said Strategy Analytics.
The following issues are impacting the mobile broadband modems market: a declining PC market, carriers bundling tablets with smartphones and offering subsidies or service extras, providing lower cost SIM-only data plans, lengthening modem lifecycles, a second-hand modem market and shared data plan tariffs across multiple devices.
“USB modem sticks and embedded PC modem modules continue to lead the two year decline, while the growth in Wi-Fi-enabled CE devices saw mobile hotspot routers continue to be the bright point in the gloomy market,” said Andrew Brown, executive director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics and author of the report.
