Sales of dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi phones, including dual service/UMA and IMS-based handsets, hit $7.6 billion in the second quarter of this year and are expected to be up 16 percent for the year overall, according to Infonetics Research. And the number of FMC phone units is expected to nearly quintuple in the five years from 2007 to 2011.
Meanwhile, the nascent FMC network element market, which includes UMA network controllers, voice call continuity application servers, and multiaccess convergence gateways, grew fivefold from 2006 to 2007. That market is forecast to grow another sevenfold between 2007 and 2011 worldwide. Brasil Telecom’s VCC initiative, the first large scale VCC deployment for residential services, is adding steam to the VCC application server market, while the multiaccess convergence gateway market is building some momentum, with strong activity in India and growing interest in other parts of the world.
“UMA continues to dominate the worldwide seamless FMC market, and remains a two-horse race, with unabated deployments at T-Mobile USA and Orange in Europe, which, as anticipated, is launching 3G UMA,” said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and co-author of the report. “In addition, Rogers Wireless has now joined the UMA bandwagon in North America. We expect all the phone and equipment segments in the niche FMC market to grow rapidly, with the economic downturn actually making T-Mobile USA’s offering more attractive to stretched consumers.”
Meanwhile, the number of worldwide seamless FMC subscribers is rising rapidly, jumping from 1.7 million in 2007 to 9.7 million in 2008.
