Research company IHS Markit has revealed the share of Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung in the global mobile infrastructure market in 2017.
Huawei has become the largest telecom equipment maker in 2017 beating Ericsson, which is struggling to find networking deals in several markets.
Huawei, a leading telecom gear supplier from China, was the only equipment vendor to gain share in the mobile infrastructure market last year. Huawei’s mobile infrastructure share increased from 25 percent to 28 percent.
Ericsson’s global mobile infrastructure equipment share dropped from 28 percent in 2016 to 27 percent in 2017.
Ericsson, the second largest vendor from Sweden, was more active during the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2018) announcing several 5G deals. The industry is expecting that Ericsson could make a strong comeback this year or in 2019.
The mobile infrastructure share of Nokia decreased from 24 percent to 23 percent. The report did not cite reasons for the marginal drop in Nokia share.
Nokia, despite acquiring Alcatel-Lucent, has only 23 percent share in the worldwide mobile infrastructure market. Nokia has recently started strengthening its top management team to secure more deals.
ZTE, despite facing pressure in the U.S. telecom market, has 13 percent share of the global mobile infrastructure market.
Samsung, which focuses on 4G infrastructure, has 3 percent share of the mobile infrastructure market.
The mobile infrastructure market including radio access network (RAN), switching and core equipment grew 15 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter of 2017 — driven by previous year-end loaded projects in various spots, including China and India, and the completion of other expansion projects in North America.
But the mobile infrastructure market fell 10 percent on year-over-year in Q4 and dropped 14 percent in 2017.
“Despite relative stability in North America and slight pickup in Japan, mobile infrastructure revenue declined in 2017 in all regions, and even more so in China,” said Stephane Teral, executive director, mobile infrastructure and carrier economics research at IHS Markit.
The report said the 2G / 3G / LTE macro hardware revenue fell 14 percent to $37.2 billion in 2017 from $43.3 billion in 2016.
China is the largest mobile infrastructure market with around 680,000 enhanced NodeBs (eNBs) shipped last year, down from 1 million in 2016.
When excluding 5G from the forecast, the 2G / 3G / LTE mobile infrastructure hardware market will decline to $13 billion by 2022 — a five-year (2018–2022) CAGR of -18.4 percent.
When including 5G in the forecast, 2G / 3G / 4G / 5G hardware revenue will increase to $25 billion by 2022, with a five-year CAGR of -7.8 percent
5G hardware revenue is expected to reach $11 billion in 2022, starting from a very low base of early adopters in the US in the second half of 2018, followed in 2019 by South Korea and China’s massive trial that will generate revenue for vendors.
Baburajan K