The worldwide radio access network market dipped 6% to $9.6 billion in the third quarter of 2008, after a second-quarter peak because of the Beijing Olympics, Infonetics Research said yesterday.  However, the W-CDMA segment grew 12% in the quarter and 19% versus the same quarter last year.

"Growth in the W-CDMA segment is due to sustained deployments in various regions, ranging from smartphone- and datacard-driven upgrades in North America and Europe to simple 3G rollouts in other regions. Although the global economic turmoil is likely to put more pressure on the already tough RAN market, Russia, hit by a major currency crisis, is the only country where major mobile operators have announced the suspension of all network equipment orders,” Infonetics analyst Stéphane Téral wrote.

IP-based softswitches are a highlight, as is RAN market leader Ericsson.  Also in the quarter, Nokia Siemens slightly passed Huawei in mobile switching subsystems and the GSM equipment segment is up slightly everywhere except in Western Europe, Téral wrote.

On the subscriber front, Infonetics reported 3.3 billion customers in 2007, expected to reach 5.2 billion by 2011.