The global Radio Access Network (RAN) market maintained robust activity in the third quarter of 2025. According to Omdia, the total RAN hardware and software revenue reached nearly $8 billion. Key industry players include Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Samsung. Globally, these companies dominate the market, but if we exclude China, Ericsson takes the lead, followed by Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE.
Rémy Pascal, RAN lead analyst at Omdia, noted that the revenue figures consider hardware and software, excluding any services. He emphasized positive momentum outside China. Pascal expects the market, excluding China, to grow modestly this year.
The dominance of vendors varies across regions. In North America, Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung lead. In Asia and Oceania, top suppliers are Huawei, ZTE, and Nokia. The European market sees Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei at the forefront. Meanwhile, in the Middle East and Africa, Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia lead. For Latin America and the Caribbean, the top positions remain with Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia.
The transformation of RAN is largely driven by artificial intelligence and cloud-native architectures, particularly in the Asia-Pacific. However, full-scale adoption of Open RAN (O-RAN) beyond Japan is limited. Pascal pointed out that Japan is the regional leader in open vRAN deployments, with Rakuten Mobile boasting the largest open vRAN network globally. Other Japanese operators like NTT Docomo and KDDI are also early adopters.
Elsewhere in Asia-Pacific, progress is slower, with active trials and pilot deployments in countries such as India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Vietnam. Pascal explained that Omdia uses the term “open vRAN” to combine functional disaggregation and virtualization principles. This approach merges Open RAN’s aspects, like disaggregation and open interfaces, with vRAN’s virtualization and use of general-purpose servers, offering a more transformative solution.
