ABI Research

A slew of new devices leveraging improved connectivity to mobile handsets have fueled strong growth for wearable wireless mHealth devices in 2012. By the end of the year, nearly 30 million devices will have shipped, up 37 percent on 2011 shipments.

The GNSS IC market is showing steady revenue growth in 2012, with the industry now setting its sights on the next major milestone: $3 Billion.

The African cellular market is very much pulling in the subscribers. In 3Q-2012, the 54 countries and 1.08 billion people have accumulated 821 million subscriptions, up 16.9% year-on-year, resulting in a cellular subscription penetration of 76.4%. In the first quarter of 2013, cellular penetration will eclipse 80%. Given the fact that a significant percentage of prepaid users maintain more than one active prepaid subscription to minimize interconnection charges, there is still subscriber growth to be had.

The Samsung Galaxy Appeal is one of the first mass produced phones to ship with a high performance 3G CMOS power amplifier (PA).  Despite an historical presence from CMOSin the 2G handset market concerns over performance have severely limited its progress in the 3G domain.

ABI Research forecasts that a total of 1.95 billion NFC-enabled devices will ship in 2017 — a combination of both handsets and CE Devices. The lion’s share of NFC enablement will continue to be focused in the handset market, although we are expecting a surge of NFC functionality included within CE devices, for simple pairing of devices, exchange of data, and online authentication functionality. In total, 395 million CE devices will ship in 2017, predominantly into media tablets, PC accessories, and gaming consoles.

After many years of waiting, 60 GHz technology looks set to emerge from a niche technology to a mass market solution. The main enabler has been the linking of the WiGig Alliance with the Wi-Fi Alliance and the forthcoming ratification of the 802.11ad standard which will encourage more Wi-Fi IC vendors to add 11ad to future tri-band solutions (i.e., 11n / 11ac / 11ad).

ABI Research expects sales of base station processors to grow at 17 percent annually and reach $1.1 billion in 2017 driven by the growth in compact format femto-, pico-, and microcell small cell basestations, which will account for the majority of the processor market in 2017. With macrocells declining at 13 percent per year over the next 5 years, and microcells growing at a modest 7 percent the large growth in picocells and outdoor femtocells will consume the majority of next generation base station processors.

In the recent IMS/VoLTE Competitive Assessment, ABI Research rates Ericsson as the overall leader with respect to innovation and implementation. Ericsson’s large cache of IMS and VoLTE patents, industry leadership in interoperability testing, and market share firmly places them in the top position. Closely at their heels are Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks, both of whom have strong portfolios, and in some aspects are superior. Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks hold dominant positions at the most demanding, leading wave LTE IMS deployments, and Nokia Siemens Networks is ahead with virtualization technology. Additionally, the Huawei and ZTE unique propositions are noteworthy.

Despite the hype around the decline of PNDs and the rise of smartphone applications, there is a long-term future for dedicated GPS devices. Total GPS device revenues are forecast to grow from $6.5 billion in 2011 to over $8 billion in 2017. With the exception of PNDs, all device categories grew in 2011, including cycling computers, golf caddies, and recreational devices.

While microwave and millimeter wave high-power vacuum electron devices (VEDs) remain “below the radar” of many industry observers, the total available market (TAM) for this segment is nearly $1 billion in 2012.