Dell’Oro Group forecasts that shipments of femtocells will grow from 170,000 in 2008 to 27.4 million in 2012 (an amazing 356% CAGR). Nearly all these femtocells will be W-CDMA-based. Femto revenues will rise from nearly $50 million in 2008 to over $2.7 billion in 2012. However, the growth will initially be slower than for wireless routers and other similar technologies due to higher costs.
Carl Weinschenk isn’t worried about the costs
“History says…that equipment costs go in one direction: down. If cost is the biggest issue, femtocells are on their way.”
Infonetics Research says the worldwide FMC infrastructure equipment market grew 5-fold from 2006 to 2007, and forecasts another 10-fold growth between 2007 and 2011.
- Dual mode cellular/WiFi phone market was $26.8B in 2007, and will nearly triple by 2011
- Nokia leads by far in dual mode phones
- UMA (+ VCC) subscribers will grow to 63.7 million in 2011
- UMA network controller revenue will grow more than 10-fold from 2007 to 2011
Infonetics clearly believes in the future of UMA, but with the leading dual mode handset vendor saying recently that it might not build any more UMA phones, I wonder if things are a bit less certain than this.
Alternatively, will femtocells sweep WiFi?
Fierce Wireless believes that femtocells could be poised to sweep the fixed-mobile convergence battle out from under WiFi, now that Verizon and AT&T have both confirmed their interest.
Some utterly ridiculous femtocell scare mongering
According to Lord Toby Harris of the (UK) House of Lords science and technology committee, “The challenge these signal boosters will pose in terms of policing is going to be enormous”. The apparent problem is that femtocells allow the authorities to trace an internet criminal’s IP address as far as the base station, but finding the phone that connected to the device is much more difficult.
Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton points out that this is a generic problem that applies to all types of mobile internet access (i.e. it’s got nothing to do with femtocells). In fact, femtocells will make it much easier to trace the phone, because only a designated set of phones will be permitted access. But for some reason this was not enough to stop Computing from publishing their sensationalist headline. How ridiculous.
Femto demand from consumers?
Desperately uninformed comments, but most of these people seem to want a femtocell. Or is it “charging a fee for what should be free“?
Europe clears mobiles on aircraft
Following on from Ofcom’s recent decision, the European Commission has now cleared the use of mobile phones on planes above 3000 ft. Some FAQ here.
Those macro networks need some femto relief
It’s beginning to happen – near the bottom of this article, Lynette Luna reports that “HSPA technology is facing capacity problems in Korea as the popularity of video services is hurting voice quality.” Elsewhere the FT reports on the explosion of mobile broadband use.
And finally…
Attocells for real as software turns smartphones into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots.
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: attocells, Carl Weinschenk, Dell'Oro, Femtocell, femtocells, in-flight GSM, Infonetics, ip.access, UMA
