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Revenues for base-station chipmakers will slowly decrease over the next five years, says market research firm In-Stat in its report ‘Worldwide Cellular Base Station Components Forecast’.

Providers are upgrading to the fastest cellular technology as quickly as they can, but doing it while keeping price pressure on infrastructure equipment makers, says In-Stat. Further adding to price pressures are Chinese and other low-cost Asian semiconductor makers that have recently become more prominent in the global market.

“Semiconductor revenue from base-stations is forecast to drop over the next few years,” says analyst Allen Nogee. “In these next five years, WiMAX infrastructure semiconductors will make up a small part of this shortfall, as will other infrastructures, such as mobile TV networks, but these networks likely won’t be able to totally fill the gap,” he adds.

In-Stat also finds that GSM semiconductor revenue remains strong, driven by capacity expansion in developing countries. However, overall, the number of power amplifiers shipped is forecast to fall from 5 million in 2007 to 3 million by 2011.

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