My big expectation this year is I think we'll see some big plays on the wireless telecom front, as more pressure is placed on that infrastructure. If you think about it, every time you look up Facebook on your phone or check your email, you're putting pressure on bandwidth, particularly wireless bandwidth. This is great news for players like Alcatel Lucent and Cisco, who are seeing a pretty dismal picture otherwise, but now they have to sit up and say, How are we going to keep up with this demand? Well, with the large number of other vendors in this area, I think they're going to have to expand as quickly as possible, which will be through M&A.
These guys don't have time to keep up with in-house developments - there's too much pressure, too many users, and not enough time. Why would they even try, when they can get a solution from outside the company for potentially less money, and certainly less time?
Average consumption rates for data are going up almost 50% every half year in this space. Thats a lot to keep up with! In just the next three years, carriers are expected to spend more than $117 billion just to keep up with demand on wireless infrastructure.
Expect to see a lot of changes as this demand causes jockeying for position, M&A activity, and hopefully some exciting surprises on the technology front.