Sales of LTE radio access network equipment increased almost 3X in 3Q12 over a year earlier but this was not enough to offset lower carrier spending on 2G/3G gear, according to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group. The report finds that the total mobile RAN market declined 11 percent in 3Q12, and that Ericsson maintained its leadership position in LTE while Nokia Siemens Networks passed Alcatel-Lucent to become the number two LTE vendor. Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent shared the third spot with approximately 15 percent of LTE RAN revenue shares respectively.
“This is the fourth straight quarter that total mobile RAN revenues have suffered double-digit declines year over year,” said Stefan Pongratz, analyst with Dell’Oro Group. “The good news is that we are seeing operators increasingly putting an emphasis on network coverage, performance, and quality, in the hope of differentiating their networks. They know that once they fall behind on LTE coverage/performance, it will become increasingly challenging to generate net adds. This is spurring LTE spending/commitments not only in the US, Japan, and Korea, but now also in Russia, Brazil, and even the UK and France,” continued Pongratz.
