Healthy growth forecast for RAN market - Dell’Oro

Analyst firm Dell’Oro reckons the renewed growth being experienced by the global radio access network market has a few years left in it yet.

The company has just published its latest RAN market five year forecast and is saying total revenues will be $200 billion over that period. However most of the growth will be in the next year or two, with things slowing after that once everyone has got 5G out of their system. The market is expected to grow by 4% this year, but more like 2% CAGR over the full period.

“Following three consecutive years of declining worldwide RAN revenues between 2015 and 2017, the global upswing that began in the second half of 2018 has become deeper and stronger, reflecting a shift from 4G to 5G that is accelerating at a torrid pace, much faster than anyone expected,” said Stefan Pongratz, Analyst with the Dell’Oro Group.

“We expect these trends to propel the overall RAN market to advance at a healthy pace over the near-term accommodating an intense 5G capex envelop before growth tapers off in the outer part of the forecast period resulting in a flat CAGR between 2019 and 2024.”

As is standard practice with Analyst press releases, most of the juicy, granular data is kept secret in the hope that people will pay for the full report. They did offer the following extra morsels, however: 5G NR RAN investments to surpass $100 Billion, 5G NR small cell market to approach 10 percent to 20 percent of overall 5G NR market. Global macro and small cell transceiver shipments to approach 0.7 Billion. Millimeter Wave 5G NR to account for one sixth of overall small cell investments.