With the launch of the HTC EVO 4G it's interesting to note what ABI Research has found about 4G for the past year.
At the end of 2009 there were more than 170 802.16e
carriers across 65 countries, covering 480 million people. That
number
is projected to cross the 1 billion mark by 4Q-2012.
USB dongles, CPE and
laptops have primed the market, but mobile handsets will be essential to the success of
WiMAX.
Yota, Sprint, and Clearwire have already started beefing up their
lineups with models from HTC and Samsung.
May, mobile operators are seeking out LTE licenses. Twenty
carriers will launch by 4Q-2010. Population coverage lags WiMAX
but will
catch up, reaching 600 million people by 4Q-2012. LTE coverage
will
start in urban hotspots but carriers indicate they will push
coverage
rapidly in order to handle the increasing mobile data wave.
The 4G market could well have 150 million subscriptions by
4Q-2014. The
split between WiMAX and LTE will depend on WiMAX carrier
commitments to
upgrade to 802.16m. WiMAX vendors such as Motorola and Huawei are
gearing up to offer "802.16e+" which will bring features of
802.16m to
the current market. Many companies in the ecosystem are already
working
on interoperability testing for 802.16m.
"TD-LTE is the wildcard," says VP for forecasting Jake Saunders.
"It was
originally primed as an evolutionary technology for TD-SCDMA
carrier
China Mobile, but has been gaining interest from some WiMAX
carriers.
Both camps will be frantically trying to ramp up IC wafer
manufacturing,
product portfolios and population coverage. There will be
considerable
scrutiny over the next few years."
Practice director Philip Solis adds, "Some WiMAX service providers
may
switch from WiMAX to TD-LTE, but others are doing this partly as
insurance and partly to assure investors of an alternate path so
they
may go forward with WiMAX. This is something for smaller
greenfield
service providers to consider. Large mobile operators will move
forward
with LTE whether it be on FDD or TDD spectrum. Clearwire can do
both
WiMAX and LTE if it wants to since it has the spectrum to do so."
For more information, visit ABI Research's "4G
Market Data" (http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1004252),
which is part of the firm's "4G
Research Service" (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/service/4G_Research_Service).