Huawei is one of the Asian vendors to watch in the mobile infrastructure market, giving leading mobile infrastructure companies stiff competition, according to a new study from ABI Research, entitled ‘Mobile Networks Vendor Strength Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats Analysis'.

ABI Research senior analyst Nadine Manjaro says that, as of the first quarter of 2008, Huawei owned almost 8% of the world's cellular infrastructure market, compared with market leader Ericsson at 29% and Nokia Siemens more than 23%, "but don't be deceived by that disparity: Huawei is the vendor to watch, given its overall increase in market share over the past six quarters".

"And, squarely in its sights is the number-three vendor, Alcatel-Lucent, with a market share of just over 13%."

She adds that, "China is the leading wireless market and its top three operators plan to spend close to $80-billion on infrastructure over the next three years, which, along with strong growth in India and Africa, might catapult Huawei into the lead within three to five years. At the least, Ericsson is not likely to be in any kind of ‘comfort zone' as it tries to face down the growing threat from the muscular Chinese giant."

Huawei spokesperson Shalate Portia Davhana tells Engineering News that the reason why Huawei is such a strong competitor in the mobile infrastructure market is that it serves more than 400-million mobile users in over 100 countries and regions.

"To understand customers requirements better, Huawei has established more than a dozen joint mobile innovation centres, together with global leading operator partners for technology research and new service development.

"Secondly, Huawei invests 10% of its revenue in research and development (R&D) annually, which helps maintain its competitive advantage. For the wireless product line, we have more than 10 000 employees engaged in R&D. By June this year, Huawei had applied for 30 569 patents, including 8 300 in the area of wireless telecommunication."

She says that Huawei has a competitive edge and is well positioned and ready for any industry transformation with all its solutions to increase its market share.

To boost smooth mobile network evolution from 2G to 3G and long-term evolution (LTE), Huawei recently launched its innovative single radio access network (RAN) solution. Single RAN solution features a unified fourth-generation base transceiver station platform, base station controller platform, cotransmission and unified operations and management, which can support multimode radio access, including LTE.

For operators, Huawei's single RAN simplifies selection and enables network evolution by obviating the need for significant investment in multiradio access networks. More importantly, this solution has been selected and deployed by a number of operators in Europe and Asia, including China.

In terms of how much of the market share Huawei is aiming for, Davana says, "Convergence and broadband are the dominant trends in mobile infrastructure industry. More new technologies, such as IP bearer, software defined radio, multicarrier and new energy solutions are on the way. Under such circumstances, mobile operators are faced with more fierce competition, more technological options, and more attractive service demand from consumers.

Currently, Huawei has entered all the mainstream operators in South Africa, namely Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom and Neotel.

Source:engineeringnews