Fixed Mobile Convergence

A report from ABI Research finds that the sluggish pace of femtocell sales and acceptance, as earlier reported by TMCnet, is due to the current gloom doom global economic crunch scenario.

However, after reviewing recent data and updated market research inputs, ABI has come to the conclusion that the current trend is only a temporary one and sales should pick up by 2010.

Its study entitled “Femtocells (News - Alert): Consumer, Enterprise and Metro Markets” examines related challenges, value chains including vendor rating and management, collaborative requirements and system integration required for massive scale femtocell deployment. TMCnet had earlier reported on ABI’s femtocell vendor specific analysis.

“Femtocell (News - Alert) rollouts to date have been limited, controlled ones,” said Aditya Kaul, senior analyst, ABI. “But ABI Research expects that 2010 will see shipments climbing well above a million units.”

Kaul backs his statement by citing an example of picoChip (News - Alert), a femtocell integrated circuit (IC) silicon chip supplier, announcing that that it has procured a multimillion dollar round of funding and allegedly feels that it could be oriented towards enhancing femtocell centric IC infrastructure.

“There is a lot of similar activity behind the scenes, and new partnerships which point to preparation for a major market expansion,” said Kaul.

ABI suggests that funding could be done in a phased and cautious manner with little capital pumped in initially to protect the investor, investee and involved financial institution from possible disaster should plans go awry or stagnate.

It claims to be privy to inside information from a leading multinational mobile device, equipment, infrastructure and service provider that allegedly claims it will be announcing in late 2009 or early 2010 fairly extensive femtocell deployment in many activity hubs around the world. This announcement, ABI surmises, should be the ideal trigger to prompt other companies to join in the race so that they can avail of the presumably reasonable market demand.

ABI sensibly plays the Devil’s Advocate and looks at the other side of the coin – the challenges. It accepts that the comparatively high cost of femtocells and actual large scale deployments (till now only simulated via computer generated attractive graphics) could pose major headaches.