Global Open RAN market growth exceeds expectations once more

The latest findings from telecoms equipment market trackers Dell’Oro features another increase in its forecast for the Open RAN market.

It has only been a few weeks since the last upward revision in Dell’Oro’s Open RAN market forecast but things seem to be moving so rapidly that the analyst firm has felt compelled to tweak them once more. This time it coincides the release of its Q2 numbers for the sector, which apparently ‘crushed’ expectations, having accelerated at ‘a torrid pace’.

For a sober outfit like Dell’Oro to use such emotive language speaks volumes. It doesn’t tend to give too much away in its reports but it did share that North American Open RAN revenues increased four-fold year-on-year in the quarter and that it now forecasts overall Open RAN revenues to more than double this year. Unsurprisingly nearly all of that is coming from North America and APAC.

“The Open RAN narrative continues to morph,” said Dell’Oro’s Stefan Pongratz. “While there is no question that this shift towards more openness is moving in the right direction, it is more salient than ever to understand how this movement is impacting the dynamics between the established and new suppliers.

“The results in the quarter taken together with the underwhelming deal momentum with the emerging RAN suppliers are starting to shift the scale in favour of Open RAN being more a new requirement for the established players than a disruptive architecture for the smaller suppliers.”

In other words the promised vendor free-for-all isn’t necessarily coming to pass, while there is still a bit of a shake-up going on. The main effect right now seems to have been to tip the balance of power away from Sweden and Finland, towards South Korea and Japan. Dell’Oro say the top Open RAN vendors by revenue in the first half of this year were Samsung, Fujitsu, and NEC.

The latter seems to have been especially busy this year, most recently getting involved in Orange’s Open RAN development project, and its close relationship with Rakuten Mobile and its Symphony arm has been a big part of that. With the US having been the main political driver of Open RAN, it would be interesting to know how well this pivot to East Asia fits with their geopolitical cunning plan.