ABI Research

The smart home appliance market, defined by products with built-in connectivity, will witness substantial growth over the next five years, reaching nearly $25 billion by 2018. Currently limited to the top-end luxury models, wireless connectivity will slowly permeate to lower tier brands and models.

M2M connectivity will be embedded in more than 2 billion devices across nine key industries by 2018, but it will be cellular that will bring the bulk of the value and the connectivity revenues.

ABI Research expects the market for small cell backhaul equipment to grow to over $5 billion in 2018, up from a forecast $487 million for 2013 representing a 48% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

ABI Research’s GNSS IC vendor matrix concluded that, overall, Qualcomm is the leading GPS IC vendor, followed by Broadcom in second place, and CSR in third. The vendor matrix compares companies on 15 criteria across the broader categories of GNSS Innovation and Implementation. Qualcomm’s domination of cellular GPS IC shipments courtesy of its embedded platform strategy, coupled with its strong IZat and Gimbal platforms means it is well placed to remain at the top in 2013/14.

Carrier Wi-Fi started to gain momentum in 2013 driven by increasing data demands and new Wi-Fi advancements. Cable operators are enthusiastically adopting the technology as an entrance into the wireless market. ABI Research forecasts Carrier Wi-Fi access point shipments in 2018 to reach 9.7 million with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for 70 percent of that number.

In 2013 10 percent of the remote controls shipped with major home consumer equipment will be RF-enabled.  Over the next five years there will be a major surge in RF technology adoption for remote controls as vendors look to differentiate their products, and/or drive growth in smart home services.  While at the same time RF solutions continue to fall in price, implementations become more simplified and lower powers are achieved.

LTE-TDD will go mainstream in 2014, and it is not just about China Mobile’s recently announced commitment to spend $3.3 billion on rolling out 207,000 LTE-TDD base stations. In the US, Clearwire is anticipated to have rolled out 5,000 LTE-TDD base stations which will play a complementary role in Sprint’s overall LTE service plans. Around the world, there are 60 LTE-TDD deployments, of which 21 have commercially launched.

Despite the continued decline of PNDs, and the threat of smartphones, smart watches and eyewear, the portable GPS-enabled device market is forecast to continue to hold its own thanks to dedicated HUD/eyewear, cycling and health/tracking devices.

The worldwide semiconductor market is expected to grow 3% from 2012 to 2013. There has been sequential market growth from 1Q13 to 2Q13 and the vast majority of the top 20 vendors are expecting 3Q13 to grow revenues again.

The growth of Bluetooth v4.0 (Smart and Smart Ready) devices has been phenomenal, from zero shipments in 2010 to over 1 billion shipments in 2013. This speaks to the desire for ultra-low power wireless technology across the industry.