Ericsson Leads LTE RAN Standard Contributions

​Companies work within standards groups to make contributions, which are approved through voting.  “From 2005 until 1H 2011, Ericsson has made the most approved contributions to the LTE RAN standard,” says Philip Solis, research director, mobile devices.  “This is one of several reasons why Ericsson is a leader in LTE.”

Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks together had the second highest number of contributions, followed by Huawei.  In 2009 alone, Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks were the leading contributors.  During 2010 and during 1H 2011, Huawei was the leading contributor.  This analysis was done for 3GPP RAN1 to 3GPP RAN3 for LTE-specific contributions.  Including HSPA radio contributions that are applicable to LTE is another way of looking at this and would have produced different rankings.

Some other notable findings include:

•    Of the top 15 contributors, nine are from Asia-Pacific, four are from Europe (Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia/NSN, and Vodafone), and two are from North America (Motorola and Qualcomm).
•    Of those nine Asia-Pacific contributors, three are based in China (CATT, Huawei, and ZTE), three in Japan (NEC, NTT DoCoMo, and Panasonic), two in South Korea (LG Electronics and Samsung), and one in Taiwan (HTC).
•    Of the top 15 contributors’ contributions, the top two had nearly one-third of the contributions, the top four had over half of the contributions, the top six had over two-thirds of the contributions, and the top seven had nearly three-quarters of the total contributions.

“Companies’ contributions are indirectly related to patents, but are still a means of detecting which companies are pushing their intellectual property into the standard,” continues Solis.  “It is interesting to see how some of the European and American companies have held leading positions in the shift from 3G to 4G and many Asia-Pacific companies – especially in China, Japan, and South Korea – make up a large portion of the top fifteen contributors.”

ABI Research’s new report, “LTE Innovation by Company,” depicts the companies contributing the most the 3GPP LTE standard.

It is part of ABI Research’s Mobile Device Intellectual Property and Royalties Research Service.

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