According to a new report from Juniper Research, demand for improved 3G reception for residential mobile voice and broadband use will be principal driving forces behind the growth of femtocells in the next few years, with subscribers exceeding 15 million globally during 2012.
The Femtocells research evaluated three adoption scenarios, and found that there is significant upside market potential for subscriber growth beyond these levels especially in developed nations. Juniper Research also found that femtocells will begin as standalone units but become integrated into the home wireless router in future, to form a "multi function mix and match" home network services gateway: router vendors are already working towards this.
Femtocells report author Howard Wilcox gave more details: "Surprisingly for some people, surveys such as that by Orange in March show that most mobile usage actually takes place from our homes. Poor indoor signal strength and slow web access are quite common problems faced by users. Femtocells offer an attractive solution – both for users and network operators who themselves can achieve economies through data traffic offload."
Further report findings from the Juniper Research report include:
- Shipments of standalone femtocells will take off over the 2011/12 period, but integrated units will be larger in value by 2014.
- The top three regions for femtocell subscribers in 2014 will be Western Europe, North America and the Far East & China.
- Revenues from new, advanced femtocell services will gain traction as soon as 2011.