[Infonetics]: Small Cell Market to Reach $2.1B by 2016 ($700/unit)

 
Infonetics Research principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, Stéphane Téral (pictured), recent report forecasts that ".. the global small cell market to grow rapidly, with about 3 million small cells shipping and the market worth about $2.1 billion in 2016 ... Infonetics expects public space femtocells to make up more than 50% of all small cells shipped in 2012".
 

In the context of the report, small cells are "low power mobile network nodes known as microcells, picocells, and femtocells (public space, not residential) made by the "Big 5" RAN vendors -- Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, and ZTE – as well as small cell specialists like ip.access, Contela, Juni, Minieum Networks, Ubiquisys, and others".

" .. Small cell market growth is being driven by operators seeking to enhance saturated macrocellular networks that are currently struggling to maintain a decent mobile broadband experience for subscribers".

For example, 70,000 units may be required to cover just London during the Olympic games this summer - see  "A Year Before the Olympics - London is Running Out of Mobile Capacity" - here.
   

" .. the chief objective is to complement and enhance the macrocell layer from a capacity standpoint with a new breed of low-power nodes like public space femtocells and WiFi. But dividing the macro layers into smaller cells remains challenging due to inter-cell interference and backhaul issues. The question is: how small can the cell be? Because the smaller the cell, the higher the number of units required to cover an area, and that will determine the true size of the small cell market"

  

See "Small cell market to hit 3 million units in 2016, driven by urban area capacity upgrades" - here.

Related post - "[Infonetics]: Femtocell Market to Reach $3B by 2015" - here and "[Infonetics]: Demand for Data Drives MNOs to Deploy Small Cells; Already Offload 10%" - here.