Market Corner - 29/06/08

A few set of market information released this week:

• According to Gartner, there currently are 1bn PCs in use, and it projects that 2bn PCs would be in use by 2014. Almost 60% of the installed base is in Europe, NA and Japan, serving 15% of the world population. Most of the growth will now come from emerging countries (70%). In 1Q08, about 70m PCs were sold in the quarter (up 14.6%).

• Google has delayed its plan to have new phones based on its Android platform. The handsets will not arrive before 4Q08.

• According to ABI Research, there would be 1m wireless high definition TV by 2012 (vs 100k in 2008).

• In the US, muni WiFi networks have suffered shutdowns due to a lack of interest. As a consequence, muni WiFi vendors also are suffering. The latest is MetroFi that is going out of the game.

• According to AMI Partners, 31% of U.S. small businesses are big fans of smartphones.

• According to SITA, mobile phones could be used as passenger tracking devices and save airlines $600m on reducing flight delays.

• Infonetics estimates that the worldwide RAN equipment revenue was $10bn in 1Q08, down qoq 14%, but up 3% yoy.

• According to Motorola, European adoption of femtocells is set to rise in 2009.

• NSN expects price erosion to continue in the telecom network market.

• ICANN will liberalize internet domain names from 1Q09.

• According to Infonetics, the worldwide WiMAX equipment market grew 69% to $363m in 1Q08. Motorola was the mobile WiMAX market leader in the quarter with over $50m sales, while Alvarion dominated the fixed WiMAX market. The number of WiMAX subscribers is expected to grow to 6m by the end of 2008.

• According to Heavy Reading, the global WDM market would grow to $6.5bn in 2012, from $4.6bn in 2007.

• According to Juniper Research, the number of subscribers using mobile Internet services will rise to 1.7bn by 2013 (from 577m correctly).

• PNDs (personal navigation devices) shipments reach almost 31m in 2007 (up 130%) according to In-Stat. The are expected to grow to 68m units in 2012.

• NTT, Sony, KDDI, Softbank and some others have decided to unify technical-based standards for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services.

• Parks Associates expects that global shipments of GPS-enabled mobile devices to grow at 40% CAGR for the next five years to reach 834m units in 2012.

• ABI ranks Huawei as the top cellular PC modem vendor, ahead of Sierra Wireless and Novatel.

• Strategy Analytics forecasts that worldwide mobile subscriptions will rise to 5.6bn in 2013 from 3.9bn in 2008.

• Microsoft will buy mobile backup specialist MobiComp for an undisclosed amount.

• According to Gartner, worldwide mobile gaming revenues would surpass $4.5bn in 2008.