Wireless infrastructure revenue saw a 1 percent drop in the third quarter of 2012 to come in at US$11.3 billion, according to ABI Research, and a 10.3 percent fall compared to the same quarter in 2011.

In terms of market share, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) grew its radio access network (RAN) share by 4.2 percentage points during the period, the largest amount of any vendor, to hold a 22.4 percent market share. Samsung’s RAN revenue grew 1.1 points to 5 percent.

The growth for NSN and Samsung was attributed to success in LTE deployments, with NSN’s LTE revenue growing four-fold during the period.

Huawei’s RAN revenue fell by 15.2 percent compared to the second quarter of the year but the Chinese vendor retained top spot with a 24.3 percent share. Ericsson was in second place with a 22.9 percent share of revenue.

Alcatel-Lucent was fourth with a market share of 14.3 percent, down 0.8 points on the second quarter, while ZTE was in fifth place with revenue dropping 15 percent year on year.

ABI Research practice director for mobile networks, Aditya Kaul, said the RAN market has been squeezed in 2012, with revenue expected to be down by at least 10 percent for the year.