Accumulated 75 million BWA/WiMAX subscribers by 2014: Maravedis

MONTREAL, CANADA: Maravedis, a leading telecom market research and analysis firm has announced the publication of its report “WiMAX and Broadband Wireless Access Equipment Market Analysis, Trends and Forecasts, 2009-2014.” Maravedis forecasts an accumulated 75 million WiMAX subscribers by the end of 2014. “Market forecasts have been revised to reflect the economic slowdown and the progress made by the LTE camp,” said Adlane Fellah, Maravedis CEO and Founder and co-author of the report.

“Facing a strong challenge from LTE, WiMAX is leveraging its existing foothold. Our research shows its healthy ecosystem is key for its survival. More than 22 vendors shipped a total of 2.2 million WiMAX CPEs in 2008,” noted Bilel Bouraoui, Senior Analyst and co-author of the report.

“Similarly, the silicon market faced increasing competition with more than 6 players enjoying market shares of more than 7 percent each. Consolidations, mergers and exists in the device and silicon vendor communities will reduce competition in 2009 if volumes don’t ramp up fast enough,” Bilel added.

The report confirms that both WiMAX and LTE are converging upon 4G service capabilities. LTE’s primary market, 3G operators, will be unlikely to deploy LTE sooner than 2012. “While LTE appears to have the decisive volume advantage, the lag between 3G evolution and the next generation mobile network will greatly benefit WiMAX in the near term,” noted Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst.

Select key findings
* Korean and Taiwanese ODMs accounted for 60 percent of CPEs shipped in 2008.
* The 802.16e-2005 share of new WiMAX subscribers will peak in 2012 and be dominated by mobile devices with embedded wireless modems.
* Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Motorola and Samsung were the leaders in BWA and WiMAX combined equipment markets,
* The WiMAX equipment market, which includes active WiMAX subscribers, will reach an annual $4 billion in 2014, from over $2 billion at the end of 2008.
* Proprietary and fixed WiMAX equipment markets will continue to grow organically to meet the needs of WISPs and vertical segments.
* Service revenues generated by broadband wireless services will reach $15 billion in 2014.