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Wednesday, 30 May 2007 |
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WiMINORS dominate WiMAX market – for now at least…
According to market research company In-Stat while better known WiMAX/WiBro equipment vendors such as Samsung, Nokia Siemens, and Motorola received extensive press coverage in 2006 due to their high-profile service provider wins, it was still the original market entrants – Alvarion, Aperto, Redline, and Airspan - that held the dominant market positions. In-Stat does, however, expect that will change as Sprint starts its network deployment. The company has not selected any of the early market pioneers as an infrastructure partner.
“While the early pioneers of WiMAX should lose their market share dominance over the next couple of years, they should continue to grow their revenues, benefiting from the overall growth of the market,” says In-Stat analyst Daryl Schoolar.
Other WiMAX-related findings from In-Stat include:
· at the end of 2006, there were 213,300-ish WiMAX subscribers, worldwide
· almost all of those subscribers were found in
Eastern Europe
, North Africa/Middle East, and the Asia/Pacific region
· due to delays in 802.16e certification, In-Stat now believes the life cycle for 802.16d equipment will be longer than originally forecasted
And in other WiMAX news, broadband wireless access (BWA) research and analysis specialist Maravedis says increased global deployments of the technology has lead to an 85% spike in subscribers and a corresponding growth in service revenue. These and other WiMAX trends were published in the first issue of the Maravedis ‘WiMAXCounts Newsletter’. The ‘WiMAXCounts Newsletter’ is a complement to Maravedis ‘WiMAXCounts’ operator tracking service, announced on 14 May, 2007 and claimed to be the first online operator profiles database and trends analyser for the technology.
Other Q1 2007 Maravedis findings (some of which differ from the In-Stat reading of the runes) were:
· 52% of the deployments still used proprietary WiMAX equipment, 36% applied the 802.16-2004 standard, and 12% applied wave 1 802.16-2005 standard
· the
USA
,
Spain
and
Australia
were the top 3 countries in number of subscribers; in Q1 2007, they accounted for 0.5mn BWA/WiMAX subscribers
· APAC accounted for 38% of deployments, Europe 33%,
North America
17%, and CALA 13%
· WiMAX service revenues in 2006 totaled US$322mn, with recorded ARPUs of US$40.76 and US$145.54 for residential and business subscribers, respectively
· the split by subscriber type operators was 58% residential and 42% business
· APAC operators offer higher speeds compared to other regions, yet APAC has the lowest ARPU at US$30.45 for residential
· the price difference between WiMAX and DSL tends to be narrow, which tends to negate price as a factor for potential customers
So now you know.
John Williamson |
