Femtocell deployments are still several years away from becoming mainstream, according to analyst firm Berg Insight.
In its latest report, Berg said femtocell shipments will grow from 200,000 units this year, to 12 million units globally in 2014, with success mostly based in Europe, North America and "advanced markets in the Asia-Pacific region".
"By 2014, there will be almost six femtocells per macro base station and the number of users that connect to a femtocell on a regular basis is estimated to surpass 70 million," it said.
For now, however, "the femtocell concept is still at an early stage with few commercial deployments. It will take several years before shipments of femtocells become substantial", the report noted.
Femtocells are base stations intended to extend cellular coverage and broadband in homes and small office environments. This will augment the bandwidth of devices reliant on cellular broadband, such as 3G networks, and to an extent competes with Wi-Fi connectivity.
Marcus Persson, telecom analyst at Berg, said the Wi-Fi capabilities available on most PCs and smartphones will mean femtocells have little draw for consumers in these small environments.
He said femtocells need to bring "significant value" beyond Wi-Fi to persuade consumers to hop on it.
He noted that the current surge in 3G data traffic is being generated by users on the move, out of range of both home-based Wi-Fi routers or femtocells.
To encourage femtocell take-up, operators should target consumers who will buy the devices for their homes, said the analyst.
"Femtocells also need to become sufficiently standardized to ensure efficient integration and low cost per unit," he added.
In the past couple of years, the femtocell market saw some interest from industry players such as T-Mobile, Cisco and Google, although activity so far appears to have been concentrated in the United Kingdom.
Outside of Europe, femtocells have seen some investment in Japan and Korea, including the world's first commercial deployment in Singapore last November.
However, the technology has yet to be part of the mainstream consumer consciousness. A survey conducted last year found three-quarters of Europeans surveyed were unaware of what a femtocell was.
Analyst firm, Ovum, said late last year femtocells were not likely to make much impact on the industry till after this year.
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