“So far this year, the microwave equipment market has been in a revenue dip, trending downward due to pricing pressures and intertechnology competition with wireline backhaul alternatives. But now the combination of LTE-A upgrades and modest growth in small cell deployments is giving the market a small injection of energy,” notes Richard Webb, directing analyst for mobile backhaul and small cells at Infonetics Research. “Several vendors saw improved quarter-over-quarter results in the third quarter, and we expect the microwave equipment market to inch up in 2015.”
Some highlights:
- Backhaul continues to dominate the microwave market, while access and transport remain stable niche segments
- The EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) leads the world in microwave equipment revenue, followed by Asia Pacific
- Pricing pressure on microwave gear persists: Infonetics forecasts ARPU for Ethernet-only units (which account for an increasing proportion of shipments) to decline to around half its 2013 value by 2018
- Topping the microwave equipment market share leaderboard in 3Q14 are (in alphabetical order): Alcatel-Lucent, Ceragon, Ericsson, Huawei, and NEC.
http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2014/3Q14-Microwave-Equipment-Market-Highlights.asp