4G - Forecast that LTE will win over WiMAX, in part due to TD-LTE

[marketwire] Industry analyst firm WiseHarbor Research, focusing on commercial issues in the wireless and mobile communications markets for technologies, products and operator services, has published an extended forecast to 2020 for mobile devices including mobile and cellular modems in dongles and embedded modules. The forecast and its analysis include these findings:

* Mobile broadband, including LTE, will bridge the digital divide. HSPA, CDMA2000 EV-DO and LTE technologies will repeat –– for Internet access and data communications by 2020 –– the success already achieved by GSM and CDMA2000 1X in connecting 4 billion people worldwide for voice and text. Most of these will never use a wired Internet connection.
* LTE will be as successful as the leading technologies that preceded it including GSM. However, it will be 2016 –– five years after the first LTE service launches in 2010 –– before LTE accounts for more than 25% of mobile broadband device sales. LTE device sales will not equal those with CDMA-based technologies including EV-DO and HSPA/HSPA+ combined until 2019.
* Introduction of TD-LTE will precipitate the demise of WiMAX with WiMAX sales peaking by 2015. Whereas WiMAX has made significant commercial progress by occupying the unpaired spectrum that tends to be much cheaper than the paired spectrum used for CDMA-based technologies including EV-DO and HSPA, TD-LTE will eclipse WiMAX by prevailing in the use of unpaired spectrum as well as the paired spectrum already employed commercially by LTE. Commitment to TD-LTE by China Mobile in particular and significant commonalities between LTE technologies and manufactured products with TDD and FDD modes will marginalize WiMAX in the marketplace over the next few years.
* Asia Pacific will account for more mobile broadband and LTE device sales than any other region from 2011. The number of devices sold per capita will remain significantly higher in developed nations where average incomes are greatest and replacement rates are fastest. In contrast, replacement cycles are much longer in nations such as India where, as is the case with cars and other consumer durables, a relatively small proportion of devices are retired from service each year.
* Device revenues from handsets, dongles and embedded modules will plateau from 2015 with falling average prices and saturating demand for phones. Thereafter, revenue growth will continue largely from the added value mobile broadband provides for the other types of devices in which cellular modems are being embedded including tablet computers and consumer electronics.

This ten year forecast quantifies phone and non-phone device sales with segmentation for embedded and discrete devices. Forecasts include average prices and total market revenues, as well as unit sales volumes. Other published forecasts almost invariably only extend five years, most do not distinguish between handsets and non-phone devices and forecasts of revenues or average selling prices are seldom provided.

Mobile Broadband Devices Forecast to 2020 Predicts Demise of WiMAX With Rise of TD-LTE in Unpaired Spectrum