According to ABI Research, enterprise femtocells will drive the overall growth of the femtocell market to almost US$800 million by 2020. This is further boosted by the introduction of new enterprise small cells with LTE-A capabilities like carrier aggregation, VoLTE, and LAA, that were debuted by vendors like Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, and Ericsson last year. VoLTE specifically, is strengthening the business case for enterprise femtocells, aligning well with the overall LTE growth, said ABI Research. ABI said that the femtocells market segments are however, moving in different directions partly due to the technical innovation that is taking place in the market, especially in the voice related area. This is compounded by the emergence of WiFi calling, which has started to disrupt the residential femtocell market to an extent, added the firm.
ABI Reseach said that although femtocell solutions make a strong case for small-to-medium enterprisse, there is fierce competition from other in-building solutions within the medium-to-large enterprise market. The Distributed Radio System (DRS), in particular, has established a growing market with solutions from major small cell vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Airvana. A DRS solves problems that arise from clustering small cells including interference, handover, and scalability.
Ahmed Ali, Research Analyst, ABI Research
Advanced LTE features accommodate enterprise’s dynamic requirements while equipping operators to provide more lucrative services. Also, vendors shift efforts back into technology development after spending time on improving site services and forming partnerships within the ecosystem.