EJL Wireless Research Forecasts Global Macrocell 5G NR Transceiver shipments to hit 190 million units in 2021

Salem, NH, August 30, 2017:  Shipments of macrocell radio transceivers (TRx) increased by 41% in 2016 to another year of record shipments, according to the latest report from EJL Wireless Research titled “Global Macrocell Radio Transceiver (TRx) Market Analysis and Forecast, 2017-2021 13th Edition.” “We expect that 5G new radio (NR) transceiver shipments will capture 80% of overall shipments by 2021,” says founder and President, Earl Lum. EJL Wireless Research is forecasting that the macrocell radio TRx market will see a 4% decline in shipments in 2017 due to lower CAPEX spending in China and Asia Pacific as well as softness in other regions before rebounding to growth in 2018.

EJL Wireless Research estimates that Chinese equipment vendors accounted for 66% of total radio TRx shipments in 2016 and have broken a deadlock at the 50% market share level they have shared with the European vendors over the past few years. Coupled with the expectations that China will be one of the first countries to commercially launch 5G services by 2020, the Chinese equipment vendors are again expected to dominate their home market.

“We forecast that the migration of mobile networks towards 4.5G LTE-Advanced Pro technology with 4T4R remote radio units (RRU) will essentially double the total available market (TAM) for radio TRx while massive MIMO antenna radio systems (ARS) will increase the TRx multiplying factor by another 4-32x,” says Lum.

“Massive MIMO ARS for 5G using higher frequency band spectrum will effectively usher in a “period of prosperity” for the compound semiconductor industry as silicon semiconductor technologies for RF power amplifiers give way to gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) based compound semiconductors. Microwave 5G NR TRx for the 26/28GHz spectrum is forecasted to exceed 20 million units by 2021,” says Lum. ■