According to a new mobile phone forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, worldwide smartphone shipments will reach a total of nearly 1.3 billion units in 2014, representing an increase of 26.3% over 2013.
Looking ahead, IDC expects 1.4 billion smartphones to be shipped worldwide in 2015 for a 12.2% year-over-year growth rate. Slower annual growth continues throughout the forecast with unit shipments approaching 1.9 billion units in 2018, resulting in a 9.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2014–2018 forecast period.
China and India drove global growth in cellular infrastructure markets in 2014, according to analysts from Dell’Oro Group. China was the top buyer of LTE base stations and India led the world in purchasing microwave backhaul systems.
The big story in cellular infrastructure in 2014 was China. The global market for the TD-LTE flavor of radio access networks used mainly in China jumped to $6.4 billion this year from $2.4 billion last year.
"In five quarters, China Mobile [the world’s largest carrier by total subscribers] deployed 700,000 LTE base stations," said Stefan Pongratz, a director of cellular infrastructure analysis at Dell’Oro. "There’s an enormous amount of energy going into China’s LTE deployment," Pongratz said.
By comparison, US carriers such as Verizon or AT&T operate a total of about 40,000 to 60,000 4G base stations each that they have deployed over a period of almost four years. India makes up just 3% to 4% of the global base station market, compared to China at more than 20%