According to the Mobile Infrastructure Market Tracker survey by research company IHS Markit, Huawei beat out Ericsson for the top spot due to the Swedish vendor struggling to find networking deals in several markets.
“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 of mobile infrastructure and carrier economics research at IHS Markit.
In addition, the report found that Huawei was the only equipment vendor to gain share in the mobile infrastructure market in 2017, increasing from 25% to 28%.
Ericsson’s global mobile infrastructure equipment share dropped from 28% in 2016 to 27% in 2017. But due to a series of recent announcements, the industry predicts that Ericsson will make strong comeback either this year or by 2019.
Similarly Nokia’s mobile infrastructure share fell from 24% to 23% year-on-year. Although no reason for this drop was given in the report, Nokia has recently begun changing its top management team in an attempt to secure more deals.
ZTE currently holds a 13% share of the global mobile infrastructure market, despite its tumultuous relationship with the US telecom market. And Samsung has 3% share of the mobile infrastructure market.
Quarter on quarter the mobile infrastructure market, which includes radio access network, switching and core equipment, grew by 15% in the fourth quarter of 2017. The report cites year-end loaded projects in various regions, including China and India, and the completion of other expansion projects in North America.
Year on year the global mobile infrastructure market fell 10% in Q4 and dropped 14% in 2017.
Revenues in 2G, 3G and LTE macro hardware 14% to $37.2 billion in 2017 compared to $43.3 billion in 2016.
China was named as the biggest infrastructure market with around 680,000 enhanced NodeBs shipped in 2017, down from 1 million in 2016.
The report also had plenty of predictions, 2G, 3G and LTE mobile infrastructure hardware market is set to decline to $13 billion by the year 2022. When including 5G into that equation 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G hardware revenue is predicted to increase to $25 billion by 2022.
Lastly revenues for 5G hardware is expected to reach $11 billion in 2022. This will begin with a low base of early adopters in the US predicted in the second half of 2018, followed in 2019 by South Korea and China’s trial that will generate further revenue for vendors.
