Asia-Pacific operators spent a combined $400 million on mobile internet infrastructure in the second quarter, to cater to growing demand for 3G and LTE services.
Synergy Research Group believes that the market for mobile internet equipment, such as mobile media gateways and mobile routing and switching equipment, is growing at a rate of 30% per year.
This makes the segment one of the fastest-growing technology markets.
According to Synergy's David Duke, growth is being spurred by the exponential growth in mobile data traffic.
“While smartphones and tablets tend to grab more media attention, there have to be some powerful networks to support all of those burgeoning devices and applications,” he said.
Synergy and partner TeleGeography have estimated that there were 381 million 3G subscribers in APAC in mid-2011, and forecast that the number of 3G and LTE subscribers in the region will triple in the next four years.
LTE networks are now meanwhile now live in six APAC countries - Hong Kong,Japan, South Korea, Uzbekistan, the Philippines, and Singapore – and adoption is picking up steam.
According to Synergy, while Huawei and Cisco lead the pack of mobile infrastructure vendors, their market share is only a combined 41%. NSN, Ericsson, ZTE, Juniper Research and Alcatel-Lucent are all significant contenders in the market.