Telecom equipment industry revenues fall marginally in FY 12

Telecom equipment industry posted marginally lower revenues of Rs 1,13,188 crore in 2011-12 on account of policy uncertainty that slowed investments in network expansion, according to a Voice&Data survey. 

In 2010-11, the industry has logged in Rs 1,14,133 crore in revenue. 

"Nearly half of the Telecom equipment revenue came from carrier equipment manufacturers, which saw a dip of 5.06 per cent to touch Rs 55,333 crore during the year," CyberMedia group's journal Voice&Data said. 

The segment had registered Rs 58,285 crore revenue in financial year 2010-11, it added. 

The survey attributed the decline in the carrier equipment revenues to policy uncertainty which restrained many telecom operators from releasing large scale network expansion orders. Over the past year the telecom sector has been hit by a string of policy issues following the 2G spectrum allocation scam which culminated in the Supreme Court cancelling 122 licences in February. 

The 17th annual survey covered over 500 telecom companies in the country spanning carrier equipment, enterprise communication equipment, and user device manufacturers. 

"The survey bears out market apprehensions that the operators have slowed down investments in building, expanding and upgrading their networks. This could have a serious impact on Indian's tele-density and broadband targets," Voice&Data Group Editor Ibrahim Ahmad said. 

Mobile handset maker Nokia had the highest revenue of Rs 11,925 crore, followed by Korean electronics major Samsung. However, Nokia's revenue in the last fiscal showed a decline of 7.77 per cent over 2010-11. 

"They were followed by telecom equipment manufacturers like Cisco, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson, and Alcatel-Lucent," the survey said. 

Riding high on its smartphone and tablet portfolio, Samsung registered highest growth of 57.34 per cent to capture the second position with revenues of Rs 9,000 crore, the survey said. 

It added the enterprise equipment grew at 8.89 per cent to report revenues of Rs 23,183 crore in the year compared to Rs 21,291 crore in FY10-11. 

The user device segment that includes mobile handsets, fixed phones, data cards and tablet computers, contributed more than one-third to the total telecom equipment industry revenue at Rs 34,672 crore, recording a flat growth of 0.33 per cent from Rs 34,557 crore a year ago, the survey said. 

Within the carrier equipment business, segments like transmission, telecom turnkey and wireless infrastructure were the biggest losers. 

"Higher spend on enterprise and consumer communications in the last fiscal re-iterates increasing importance of user communications. Operators will have to enhance their services to match user expectations," Ahmad said.