Articles by ABI Research

ABI Research reports that Chinese handset vendors will account for over 50 percent of mobile handsets in 2015. Chinese vendors already accounted for 38 percent of mobile handset shipments in 2013 and the ongoing shift in growth to low cost handsets, especially smartphones, will increase their market share.

ABI Research expects the market for in-building wireless equipment and deployments to grow to over $8 billion in 2019, up from a forecast $4.4 billion for 2014 representing a 14% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

By end-2018, half the African population will be covered by LTE networks, as LTE base station deployment swells at a CAGR of 40% over the next five years, finds ABI Research.

Despite major GPS fitness device OEMs announcing new fitness products at CES 2014, it looks like an increasingly difficult battle between smart devices and wearables. Garmin launched its Vivofit fitness band and Vivoki/Vivahub corporate wellness solution. Magallen is one of the few companies in the GPS device OEM space that continues to show flashes of innovation, opening up its Echo watch platform to a range of third party smartphone application developers.

Wearable technology will be characterized by the diversity of products, but only the product categories with a clear use-case and therefore target audience will succeed. ABI Research projects the wearable device sales volumes in 2014 to come from healthcare and sports and activity trackers. While, the commercial launch of several smart glass products, including Google Glass will continue to drive interest in the wearable space, it will not be a significant commercial success in 2014.

Since embarking on its national smart metering project at the turn of the decade, more than 200 million new electricity meters have been deployed across China. However, according to ABI Research’s latest research, only around 50 million have so far been connected with bi-directional capabilities that can support true smart meter capabilities such as demand response. In short, this key smart meter project has not been that ‘smart’. But it is set to get smarter, and that means another wave of opportunity for technology providers.

Wi-Fi is a hot topic among car OEMs and a small number of luxury brands have already launched LTE-based Wi-Fi hotspot solutions during the past twelve months. Most major OEMs plan to follow suit with some, such as GM, claiming that it will start offering LTE-based Wi-Fi hotspot solutions in its vehicles in 2014.

China is the world’s fastest growing automotive market and the high growth in vehicle sales in the country is driving the growth in connected in-vehicle telematics and infotainment systems fitted in cars. ABI Research forecasts that almost one in two cars sold in China by 2018 will be supplied with either an embedded, or hybrid OEM-fitted telematics and infotainment system.

While the total number of stolen vehicle tracking solutions in use globally will increase from 35.5 million in 2013 to 143 million in 2018, the share of proprietary RF based systems will decrease from 24% in 2013 to 10% in 2018.

LTE network deployments will continue to grow rapidly globally. Time-division duplex (TDD) network is picking up the pace and gaining more market traction. In Asia-Pacific, LTE-TDD networks will cover more than 53% of the population by 2018 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41.1% between 2012 and 2018, while frequency-division duplex (FDD) networks will reach 49% population coverage by the end of 2018.