Asia-Pacific will account for the majority of the world's base station deployments in 2014, ABI Research predicts, driven by strong LTE momentum.
Total LTE macro RAN spending is set to hit $35 billion this year, and account for the majority of total RAN spending, according to the research firm.
APAC has become the world's largest market for LTE, with the region's total LTE installed base on track to grow eightfold this year.
One of the main drivers of this trend is China Mobile's TD-LTE rollout, according to ABI Research principal analyst Nick Marshall.
“After deploying over 200,000 TD-LTE base stations last year, China Mobile now plans a massive expansion of more than 500,000 base stations to deploy in 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions by the end of 2014,” he said.
By 2019, the firm expects China to have the largest LTE installed base in the world, accounting for over 65% of total LTE subscribers.
Ericsson, Huawei, NSN and Alcatel-Lucent are all expected to benefit from this year's increased LTE RAN spending.