The global BTS antenna shipments increased by 1.2% in 2012, according to the latest report from EJL Wireless Research titled “Global BTS Antenna Market Analysis and Forecast, 2012-2017 5th Edition.” “The slight increase in 2012 was partly due to the multi-band upgrades in North America and in Western Europe due to the LTE network launches. The market continues to shift away from single band sectorized panel antennas to multi-band antennas. As a result, multi-band antennas reached nearly 45% of the overall mix in 2012, compared with 35% in 2011,” says founder and president, Earl Lum. EJL Wireless Research is forecasting that the BTS antenna market will experience a negative unit trend from 2013-2015 as demand shifts to multi-band products.

Multi-band BTS antennas grew 40% year over year and are expected to increase to 66% of the total panel antenna market by 2017 as mobile operator demands for reducing site costs are driving the adoption of this technology. We are continuing to provide in this edition of the report, BTS antenna supplier market share data. We estimate that the Tier 1 BTS antenna suppliers controlled 42% of total BTS antenna shipments in 2012.

Total revenues including RET motor shipments and semi-active antennas reached USD $1.9 billion in 2012, up 20% from 2011 levels. We forecast revenues to stay between USD$1.9-2.0 billion through 2017 as the market transitions from single band to multi-band products.

“Remote electrical tilt (RET) enabled variable electrical tilt (VET) antennas continues to gain market acceptance and reached a penetration rate of 34% in 2012 and we continue to expect that this segment will become the largest segment by 2015,” says Lum.

“China and India continued to be the largest BTS antenna markets in 2011 at a combined 27% share, with China Mobile driving TDD-LTE triple band FAD antennas from 2013-2015. We believe that multi-band revenues will also be driven by North America and Europe,” says Lum.

The report provides a unique perspective on the global shipments and demand for BTS antenna equipment covering all frequency bands from 450MHz to 2600MHz and the following standards: GSM/EDGE, W-CDMA/HSPA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and FDD/TDD LTE.