Articles by ABI Research

For the second calendar quarter in a row, smartphone shipments represented more than half (52%) of the world’s mobile phone shipments.  Led by electronics manufacturer Samsung, an estimated 408 million handsets and 214 million smartphones shipped during the second quarter of 2013, according to market intelligence firm ABI Research.

Global ETC systems revenues are expected to grow from $4.48 billion in 2013 to $8.5 billion in 2018, with a CAGR of 14% and North America as the vital region. “Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) is finding new momentum as a way to manage traffic via dynamic toll pricing and address urban congestion issues.

With the first service providers, such as SK Telecom, now upgrading their networks to LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) and China Mobile deploying a TD-LTE network and issuing a huge tender for over 200,000 base stations, TD-LTE and LTE-Advanced are set to dominate the LTE installed base of macro basestations as early as 2015.

Worldwide broadband CPE device shipments totalled 144.9 million in 2012. Continuous growth in broadband adoption as well as upgrading to better quality services among existing broadband users will allow continuous growth in the broadband CPE market. ABI Research expects 149.4 million broadband CPE devices including modems, wired routers, and gateways will be shipped in 2013.

ABI Research’s latest forecasts for indoor small cells, which are also referred to as enterprise and consumer femtocells, predicts a return to growth after lackluster 2011 and 2012 with an increase in unit volumes in 2013 and 2014 and year-on-year growth outpacing our last forecasts.

LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) subscriptions will take an important role in the mobile subscriber market, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 295% between 2013 and 2018 to reach 500 million, which will represent 34% of the overall 1.47 billion LTE-related subscriptions. Meanwhile, total LTE subscriptions for 1Q-2013 increased by 37.5% quarter-on-quarter, reaching 108 million.

There is a fierce battle raging between distributed antenna systems (DAS), Wi-Fi, and licensed small cells for coverage and capacity in enterprise wireless systems. Each type of system has its strengths and weaknesses with active DAS systems the choice for large corporations which we define as over 100,000 square feet and with more than 100 employees. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have the choice between Wi-Fi and small cells.

The growth of 802.11ac and 802.11ad will occur in very different ways.  802.11ac will explode into devices, including smartphones, from the start while 802.11ad will see a more modest and staggered growth.  802.11ac is being pushed into smartphones by key carriers’ device requirements that are in sync with 802.11ac hotspot plans for more robust Wi-Fi offloading.

M2M Modules based on 2G technologies continued to dominate shipments in 2012 with over 70 percent market share. As a result, module revenues did not break the $1 billion mark as hoped and the average module price continued to decline.

LTE-capable networks will continue to mushroom around the globe through 2018. In particular, frequency-division duplex (FDD) networks will see their population coverage expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33 percent between 2012 and 2018 to hit 57 percent. Time-division duplex (TDD) networks will gain ground at a more rapid rate of 43 percent during this period but will only reach 52 percent population coverage due to fewer licensed markets currently.