Singapore - Based on the revenues reported by network equipment vendors, operator spending for mobile core networks decreased from US$24.6 billion in 2010 to US$21.4 billion in 2011.

“The overall decrease in mobile core network spending comes despite significant operator investments in 2011 for launching new 4G networks,” says Aditya Kaul, practice director, mobile networks. “Thanks to well-planned architectural evolutions from 3G to 4G and earlier operator investments to make their networks 4G-ready, most operators have been able to simply upgrade their existing core networks to launch 4G services, instead of replacing all of the core network equipment.”

“Despite the decrease in the total market size for core network equipment in 2011, some vendors managed to increase their core network sales,” says Jim Eller, principal analyst, wireless infrastructure. “It comes as no surprise that the market leaders are Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, together accounting for almost half of the total core network revenue.”

Market leaders Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks both increased their market shares in 2011, due to their dominant positions in contracts for 4G LTE core networks.

ABI Research’s (www.abiresearch.com) "Mobile Gateway and Server Market Data" tracks core network deployments for 3G and 4G technologies, including WCDMA, CDMA2000, LTE, TD-LTE, and WiMAX. In addition to wireless gateways (such as SGSNs, GGSNs, PDSNs, S-GWs, and P-GWs), it also covers subscriber database equipment, session border controllers (SBCs), and IMS deployments of softswitches and Media gateways (MGWs). It forecasts new deployments annually through 2017, as well as operator spend estimates for core network equipment.