How big is it?

The market for femtocells, that is.

Last week saw the release of data from ABI Research touting nearly 150m femtocell subscribers worldwide in 2012.

Then on Monday IDC announced its own research, touting 5.7m subscribers in 2011. Granted those are only ‘western Europe’ numbers, but there is a HUGE gap between the numbers.

Suppose we assume that 1/3 of the ABI number is Western Europe. That is an order of magnitude (50m to 5.7m) difference in projections.

Wow.

So, how big is the market for femtocells? It will take a while to see if the technology can live up to the hype. But for now, it looks like all systems are go. RFPs are coming at a rapid pace and vendors are fighting for position.

All of this is very good news for UMA, because it is the de-facto standard for integrating 5m or 150m femtocells into the mobile core network.

PS - the image is Godzilla vs King Kong, in a 'rematch where size really does matter'. Does Godzilla look 10 times larger than King Kong?