75 million BWA/WiMAX subscribers by 2014

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Maravedis’ new analysis of and forecasts about WiMAX and the broadband wireless access (BWA) equipment market 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. Facing a strong challenge from LTE, WiMAX is leveraging its existing foothold and our research shows its healthy ecosystem is key to its survival.

More than 22 vendors shipped a total of 2.2 million WiMAX customer premises equipment in 2008, while the silicon market faced increasing competition with more than six players enjoying market shares of more than 7% 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.

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, so that 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.

Other key findings include:
• Korean and Taiwanese original design manufacturers accounted for 60% of customer equipment 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 US$4 billion in 2014, from over 2US$ billion at the end of 2008.
• Proprietary and fixed WiMAX equipment markets will continue to grow organically to meet the needs of wireless ISPs and vertical segments.
• Service revenues generated by broadband wireless services will reach US$15 billion in 2014.

Maravedis