WiMax to take off in 2008

Worldwide mobile infrastructure equipment revenues are projected to grow steadily over the next five years, with a slight acceleration in 2008 owing to increased mobile WiMax revenues, analysts predicted today.

Dell'Oro Group expects the mobile WiMax market to grow by a compounded annual growth rate exceeding 50 per cent through to 2011.

Greg Collins, the analyst firm's vice president of mobile infrastructure research, said: "Despite this strong growth, we predict that WiMax will account for less than 10 per cent of the mobile infrastructure market in 2011 because of the lack of voice services available in the short term."

Collins added that the 3G WCDMA market is expected to perform exceptionally well by 2011, capturing "meaningful" market share from rival technologies GSM and CDMA.

The CDMA market is projected to shrink as service providers in the key growth regions of India, Brazil and Korea continue to migrate subscribers to GSM or 3G services. GSM service providers are also expected to start migrating to WCDMA.

"While growth in WCDMA remains tepid in the short term, we remain confident in its longer-term growth and potential to slowly displace GSM," said Collins.

"This is because of the large percentage of mobile service providers that have committed to WCDMA technology, and the expectation of increased subscriber adoption as handset prices drop in the future."