The 5G MCN market growth stalled for the first time, declining 8% year-on-year in the second quarter, Dell’Oro said
The global mobile core network (MCN) market experienced a decline of 15% year-over-year in the second quarter of the year, marking a historic low point in growth, according to a recent study by Dell’Oro Group.
“We have entered unchartered territory, indicating that economic headwinds have a firm grip on the market. It also strongly suggests that mobile network operators have excess capacity to meet subscriber growth numbers,” said Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “The China region dramatically impacted the MCN market’s lower year-on-year growth rate for the quarter. The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and North American regions were also depressed but not nearly as low as China. Only the Asia Pacific region, excluding China, had a positive year-on-year growth rate.”
The 5G MCN market growth stalled for the first time, declining 8% year-on-year in the second quarter, Dell’Oro said.
“The 5G MCN market was another driver for the market with new 5G SA networks being implemented. Unfortunately, the market has slowed to the point that Q2 2024 was the first quarter of the 5G era, with a negative growth rate year-on-year. To date, there are about 58 MNOs that have launched commercial 5G SA eMMB networks. In 2022 there were 21 new 5G SA networks; in 2023, 13; and in the first half of 2024, three. As a result, we estimate that the MCN market will decline 11% year-on-year in 2024,” added Bolan.
According to Dell’Oro, the 4G MCN market declined 29% year-on-year in Q2 while the VoLTE/VoNR market declined by 7% year-on-year in the quarter.
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The study highlighted that Chinese vendors ZTE and Huawei had the lowest MCN growth rates in the second quarter of 2024, followed by Nokia and Ericsson. These top four vendors accounted for more than 85% of the market in the quarter, according to Dell’Oro.
Last month, Dell’Oro published a study in which it stated that the global mobile core network market was expected to decline by 10% during the 2024-2028 period.
The reduction in the forecast is caused by severe economic headwinds, primarily the high inflation rates, and the slow adoption of 5G Standalone (5G SA) networks by mobile network operators (MNOs), according to Dell’Oro.
For the same reasons outlined for the MCN market, Dell’Oro reduced the 5-year cumulative revenue forecast for the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) market, a sub-segment of the MCN market, by 18%.