Chinese Capex to Hit How Much?
Taking projections from various analysts, the report suggests that the combined capex budgets of China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL), China Telecom Corp. Ltd. (NYSE: CHA) and China Unicom Ltd. (NYSE: CHU) will be more than 300 billion yuan renminbi (US$47.6 billion) in 2012.
How much?
If that figure is in any way accurate, then it blows the projections made by ABI Research out of the water (in a good way). The research house issued a press release in late January estimating that the Asia/Pacific capex total in 2012 (including China as well as Japan, South Korea and other markets) would go up by 5.7 percent to $58.8 billion.
If the Chinese carriers alone get anywhere close to $47 billion in spending this year then ABI's figure would need to head north by quite some way.
If Asia/Pac's capex is hitting the up ramp and North American carrier purses get loosened soon, as predicted late Monday, then 2012 might prove a better year than expected for the vendor fraternity. (See Carrier Capex Could Rebound Quickly.)
I notice, though, that no-one is expecting a major ramp in European capex and it's much harder to imagine that's going to happen any time soon.
— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading
As a touchpoint, U.S. carrier capex (wireline & wireless) should come in the low $60 billion range ($62-63 B), that's up around 5% over 2011.
Wireline includes local telcos (Tier 1, Tier 2/3, rural), CLECs, long distance carriers and cablecos.
Most of the growth is in wireless with wireline staying flat compared to last year.