Overall sales are rising but growth has lost momentum
The latest intelligent from researcher the Dell’Oro Group indicates 2G-5G Radio Access Network (RAN) market went into a “slower momentum” as the year 2022 ended. However, as 4Q 2021 extended into 1Q 2023, despite the momentary hesitation, the overall RAN market still managed to record its sixth consecutive quarter of more stable trends.
“Despite lackluster topline growth, the quarter was actually very interesting both from a regional and supplier perspective,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “Not surprisingly, growth is now transitioning away from the advanced markets towards the slower-to-adopt 5G markets. But the speed of this shift was perhaps a bit surprising as the pendulum swung drastically towards the positive in India while the North American RAN market performed much worse than expected.
The vendor rankings were mostly stable in the quarter. Vendor revenue shares were affected however, because there were vastly different growth trajectories across the suppliers, according to Pongratz. The report said the Top 5 RAN suppliers continue to be Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung. Despite the ban on Huawei kit by Western nations, the Chinese kit manufacturer is in the Top 4 suppliers outside of China along with Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung.
Nokia recorded the highest growth rate among the top 5 suppliers, while Ericsson and Samsung both lost some ground in the first quarter. Nokia is doing something right, because its RAN revenue share outside of China has been in the ascendancy over the past five quarters, according to Dell’Oro’s figures. In a release, Dell’Oro alludes to a higher baseline in India which has affected the figures for the Asia Pacific RAN market, which has been revised upward.