Many manufacturers are now actively seeking to cut costs. Nokia Siemens is making a further 1,820 staff redundant as part of an ongoing programme whilst battered Canadian kit maker Nortel, already on its knees ,is now culling another 1,300 jobs from an already massively depleted workforce. Meanwhile, Ericsson of Sweden says it expects the equipment market to be "flat" throughout the whole of next year but, strangely, goes on to stress that this gloomy outlook is is not "an official company forecast".

Among the analyst community, Kulbinder Garcha of Creidt Suisse says, “Wireless infrastructure investments could decline by as much as 12 per cent in 2009, due to a combination of the emerging market slowdown and financing risks at carriers that account for 25 per cent of global wireless spending.”

Elsewhere, Scott Siegler, of the US research house dell'Oro, says the abysmal economic situation will have a major impact in the 3G arena and believes growth next year will “fall
to the single digits” in comparison with 2008. He says, “We believe wireless has become a 'necessity' today, but add-on services like data packages are not".

Siegler's views chime well with many similar conclusions reached in Macau last week at the GSM's Mobile Asia Congress. I interviewed dozens of industry people at the event and everyone of them was of the opinion that whilst the wireless telecoms sector is better placed than many other industries to weather the economic storm, there is bound to be a downturn.

The pessimists say it will be deep and long, perhaps stretching into 2010 or even 2011 whilst the "glass half-full" brigade believe we are in for a short sharp shock but a quick recovery, probably within 12 months.

There was also considerable concern as to how western manufacturers are to cope with and respond to the long march being undertaken by the Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE.

Established manufacturers are having a torrid time attempting to compete with the low price equipment being sold by the two companies. The latest figures show that over the course of 2007 Huawei and ZTE between them took US$49 billion worth of sales away from the likes of Ericsson, Nortel, Nokia Siemens and other old-established North American and European manufacturers.

Source:telecomtv