ABI Research has slashed its previous estimates on femtocell shipments after sales came in much lower than expected. The number of shipments forecast in April for 2009, 790,000, has been cut by about 55 percent. ABI Research now believes that only about 350,000 femtocells will have shipped by the end of the year.
"Even femtocell vendors are a bit surprised that the operators haven't pushed femtocells as much or as soon as expected," said ABI Practice Director Aditya Kaul in a report. "We expect that deployments in 2010 will pick up but will be slower than expected – our data suggests about a 40 percent reduction on previous estimates."
All the large operators in the U.S. have femtocell offerings including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. However, their marketing efforts around the devices have been weak and the price of an unsubsidized femtocell seems to deter potential buyers. Femtocells have also struggled to find a compelling use case with consumers.
While Kaul said he still believed in femtocells' market potential he added that next year will be critical for some companies who manufacture the devices. "If conditions don't improve by the end of 2010, some smaller vendors may find themselves in trouble," he said.