1H 2012 Mobile Core Gateway Spend Up 14% from Last Year as LTE Core Network Spend Takes Leading Role

​Mobile core gateway spend continues to see a healthy growth streak with the 1H of 2012 seeing a 14% jump from the same period last year.  The global mobile core gateway spend for full year 2012 is expected to reach $1.34 billion, accounting for a 21% growth from 2011. LTE core gateways are driving most of this growth including both FD and TD LTE. TD-LTE gateway equipment has seen a significant jump in the second quarter with a 6.5x growth from the previous quarter and accounting for 11% of the LTE gateway spend.

With 16 TD-LTE networks having been commercially deployed, the momentum is slowly building.  Largest amongst those is China Mobile who plans to cover 500 million people by end of 2012, with the investments in the radio and core happening now. Other significant TD-LTE deployments are being done by RIL in India, MTS in Russia, and Clearwire in the US, all accounting for growth in mobile core spend for the second quarter of 2012. Overall FD and TD LTE gateway spend is estimated to be 61% of the overall gateway spend in the 1H of 2012.

Aditya Kaul, practice director of mobile networks says, “Mobile packet core spend has always been dominated by 3G WCDMA packet core elements like GGSN and SGSN, but that seems to have peaked recently. We expect 2012 to be a turning point where LTE P-GW, S-GW, and MME spend will equal 3G packet core spend becoming the dominant force from hereon. The current growth cycle on the back of LTE should easily last another 3 to 4 years, before the next evolutionary cycle kicks in.”

ABI Research’s “Mobile Gateways” market data tracks packet core network deployments for 3G and 4G technologies, including WCDMA, CDMA2000, LTE, TD-LTE, and WiMAX.  The data covers all types of wireless gateways, including SGSNs, GGSNs, PDSNs, S-GWs and P-GWs.  The market data forecasts new deployments annually through 2017, as well as operator spend estimates for gateways, and vendor market shares for core network equipment.   This quarterly market data report is included in ABI Research’s Mobile Packet Core Research Service which includes Market Data, Insights, and Competitive Assessments.

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