Telecom Lead Asia: BridgeWave, E-Band and Siklu are leading the millimeter wave equipment market.

However, larger mainstream microwave vendors are poised to make a mark on this segment from 2013.

Globally, millimeter wave equipment revenue rose 23 percent in 1H12 over 2H11.

The millimeter wave equipment market is forecast by Infonetics to top $546 million by 2016, driven largely by the increased use of millimeter wave for backhaul connections.

Licensed E band (70–90GHz) accounted for 69 percent of total millimeter wave equipment revenue in the first half of 2012.

Infonetics expects the percent of millimeter wave equipment revenue from mobile backhaul applications to grow to 87 percent by 2016, spurred by the deployment of 4G networks.

North America now accounts for about 35 percent of the worldwide millimeter wave market.

The biggest barrier to the adoption of millimeter wave is the continuing success of microwave, particularly for mobile backhaul.

“After being somewhat artificially propped up by a single large operator as was the case back in 2010 with Clearwire, the millimeter wave market has gotten back its sea legs and is showing signs of renewed growth, this time from multiple operator deployments,” said Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload, and mobile broadband devices at Infonetics Research.

“We’re still bullish on the millimeter wave market and anticipate sustained growth coming as a result of the wider availability of products, the availability of E-band spectrum, and continued demand for backhaul capacity, particularly for the emerging small cell backhaul segment,” Webb added.

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