- Dell'Oro says that the five top vendors hold 96% of the macro RAN market share
- RAN maven Pongratz told Fierce that the top two vendors own nearly two-thirds of the market
- RAN sales likely won't drastically increase before operators start rolling out 6G radios
Dell’Oro Group said that macro RAN sales have continued to stabilize in the third quarter after two years of steep declines. Still, Dell'Oro VP Stefan Pongratz said the research group is only expecting flat growth for 2025.
The group found that market concentration increased to 96% among the top five suppliers for the year so far. These top five vendors include Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung. The top two vendors in particular are tightening their grip on the market, the Dell’Oro analyst told Fierce.
“Huawei and Ericsson are the clear #1 and 2 players globally – their combined share makes up nearly two-thirds of the RAN market,” Pongratz said. The research group noted that Huawei and Ericsson’s worldwide RAN revenue share improved for the three quarters of 2025.
Huawei, which reports on a biannual rather than quarterly basis, saw company-wide profit drop 32% in first half of 2025 to $5.17 billion (37 billion yuan). Ericsson brought in roughly $924 million (8.8 billion SEK) in net income over the same six-month period. In Q3, however, Ericsson's net income jumped to just over $1.1 billion (11.3 billion SEK), tripling from the prior year.
Dell’Oro also noted that Huawei and Nokia’s RAN revenue share outside of North America improved for the 2025 period so far relative to 2024. In the third quarter, growth in EMEA was nearly enough to offset declining revenue in North America and the Asia Pacific regions.
“While near-term RAN expectations remain muted, some of the leading RAN suppliers are still cautiously optimistic that more investments are needed over the long-term to ensure the networks evolve from a connectivity pipe into an intelligence grid,” Pongratz added in a statement.
That likely means that RAN sales won’t increase significantly before the 6G radio roll-out starts around late-2028 or 2029 for a commercial launch in 2030. 5G-Advanced will not require huge RAN updates since it uses a software update.