WiseHarbor Research, which focuses on publishing multi-client forecasts and reports, has reiterated its stance on LTE (News - Alert) and announced that its forecast findings published a year ago, would now be valid for an extended period till 2025.

According to the forecast report, LTE is all set to dominate the marketplace with WCDMA-based HSPA Evolved technologies remaining upbeat beyond 2020. LTE-TDD is expected to precipitate the demise of WiMAX (News - Alert), which will peak by 2015.

Mobile device sales are predicted to peak in 2025 with the number of units sold touching 3.9 billion. This is expected to include not only personal devices but also unconnected devices such as cars and utility meters.

Total global mobile connections in service will rise to 21.5 billion by 2025, mobile operator equipment expenditures will increase at an average of 3.3 percent of inflation and handset revenues will plateau by 2015. With the growth in data traffic, operator revenue yield per megabyte is expected to decline dramatically.

However, cellular will remain on track with stellar growth because it is an affordable and convenient means of connecting people. Demand for mobile broadband will to some extent offset the price erosion in the voice and SMS phone markets. Operators are expected to resort to the two-sided charging of content providers and end users as well.

Speaking at the LTE World Summit, WiseHarbor founder Keith Mallinson said, "Mobile broadband will do for Internet connections-averaging several gigabytes usage per month by 2020-what 2G has achieved over the last 15 years in providing voice and text communication to more than half the world's population with 5 billion connections including those with multiple subscriptions."

In related news, on March 29, 2010, Keith Mallinson predicted that WiMAX sales volumes would peak around the middle of the decade and LTE would be the leading technology for new and replacement connections well before the end of the decade with extensive deployments in FDD and TDD modes.