The Dell’Oro market research group says demand for microwave transmission equipment in the first half of 2021 grew 11% year-over-year, driven by LTE and 5G. In that period, microwave revenue from mobile backhaul grew even faster, at 16%.
“The microwave transmission market is recovering from the decline caused by the spread of Covid-19 as evidenced by the strong growth in the first half of 2021,” said Jimmy Yu (pictured), vice president at Dell’Oro Group.
His report notes that the top three vendors in the quarter continued to be Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia. In the second quarter of 2021, Huawei regained most of the market share lost in the previous quarter and returned to holding a 10 percentage point lead over Ericsson.
Yu added: “Almost all of the vendors in this industry are benefiting from the improving mobile backhaul market, especially the top vendors. Since demand is rising, each vendor’s performance this year will come down to how well they navigate the supply issues created by the pandemic and semiconductor shortages.”
However, Dell’Oro noted that Latin America was the sole exception to the story of positive market growth. Latin America declined year-over-year for a ninth consecutive quarter, shrinking to its lowest quarterly revenue level that we have on record, the report says.
