“The Open RAN train continues to … accelerate at a faster pace than expected,” analyst firm says
Open RAN revenues for the third quarter of 2022 more than doubled on a year-over-year basis, according to new preliminary estimates by Dell’Oro Group.
“The Open RAN train continues to move forward and accelerate at a faster pace than expected,” the firm said in a release.
The top four Open RAN revenue suppliers in the first three quarters of this year were Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC and Mavenir, according to Dell’Oro Group’s third-quarter RAN report.
“While commercial Open RAN revenues continue to surprise on the upside, the underlying message that we have communicated now for some time now has not changed and remains mixed,” said Stefan Pongratz, VP with Dell’Oro Group. “Early adopters are embracing the movement towards more openness but at the same time, there is more uncertainty when it comes to the early majority operator and the implications for the broader RAN supplier landscape now with non-multi vendor deployments driving a significant portion of the year-to-date Open RAN market.”
North America and the Asia-Pacific region accounted for more than 95% of the Open RAN market (with more than 80% of the year-to-date growth in North America), though the analyst first noted that trials are increasing all over the world.
Open RAN is still just a small slice of the overall Radio Access Network market, however. Dell’Oro said that despite Open RAN’s growth, the collective RAN share of the top five traditional RAN suppliers—Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Samsung—was down by less than 1% compared to last year. Dell’Oro expects a slowdown in Open RAN growth rates next year, as early adoption gives way to more challenging brownfield deployments, but overall, the firm has bumped up its expectations for Open RAN and projects that it will account for 6-10% of the RAN market next year.
