Ericsson and Huawei were neck and neck in the mobile infrastructure race at the end of the second quarter, with each vendor claiming a market share of just over 20%.
This is according to figures published on Wednesday by IHS, which found that spending on macro network equipment reached US$11.4 billion in the three months to 30 June, up 2% year-on-year.
The growth was driven by 3G deployments in EMEA and unabated LTE rollouts in China, the research firm said.
"This time around, WCDMA alone pulled the 2G/3G market out of the dumps and contributed to the growth of the whole mobile infrastructure market. Substantial 3G deployments took place in Brazil, India, the Middle East, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam," said Stéphane Téral, research director for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, in a research note.
"Brazil kicked off a massive 2G GSM to 3G WCDMA migration, and Thailand has ordered mobile operators to shut down their GSM networks to reuse the spectrum for LTE," he noted.
422 LTE networks were up and running by July, IHS said, 363 of which are of the FDD variety.
IHS reiterated its prediction that spending on macro LTE infrastructure will peak this year at $23.3 billion, as operators approach the end of their network deployments.
