The global mobile core network market surged 32% in Q1 2025, driven by 5G SA rollouts, CNF upgrades, and strong growth in China – pushing Dell’Oro to raise its 2025 forecast.
In sum – what to know:
Core network growth – global mobile core network (MCN) market grew sharply in Q1 2025, driven by a 122% surge in China
SA drives demand – The shift from virtual to cloud-native functions and increasing 5G handset adoption are fueling demand for higher capacity on 5G SA networks.
Vendor wins in Q1 – ZTE saw gains from large Chinese deployments; Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE led global MCN vendor rankings.
The global mobile core network (MCN) market experienced a 32 percent year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2025, according to a recent report by Dell’Oro Group. China posted a 122 percent year-over-year increase, while the rest of the world saw 12 percent growth. As such, Dell’Oro is now projecting five percent year-over-year growth in the total MCN market in 2025, and 15 percent growth in the 5G MCN segment – driven by a 12 percent increase in China and three percent in the rest of the world.
As such, it is predicting 15 percent overall growth in MCN sales versus 2024. Dave Bolan, research director at the firm, reflected: “In China, several major projects were completed in Q1 2025, mostly beneficial to ZTE. Other factors driving growth were swapping out virtual network functions (VNFs) with cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and subscriber migration from 4G to 5G handsets, thus increasing capacity demand on newly minted 5G SA networks.”
Besides the China picture, Dell’Oro Group said Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA region) will see the highest growth in 2025. It noted “one major 5G SA network” launch in Europe in 2025, with Orange in France, plus plans by Vodafone in Spain and also Airtel in India to prep for 5G SA this year. The firm’s adjusted growth rate for 5G MCN sales is 15 percent, versus 2024, it said.
In addition, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core network installations – at a different layer, performing different functions (mostly voice, video, and messaging) – are also growing steadily, as 3G networks are decommissioned and CNF modernization accelerates. Dell’Oro Group is now projecting IMS core sales will be up five percent year-on-year in 2025. Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, and Nokia led global MCN revenues in Q1 2025.
Excluding China, the running order for top vendors in the quarter was: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE.
Separately, recent figures from Dell’Oro Group find that after two years of steep declines, the Radio Access Network (RAN) market improved in the quarter. Preliminary estimates show that worldwide RAN revenues, excluding services, stabilized in the period, resulting in the first growth since the first quarter of 2023. Stefan Pongratz, vice president for RAN market research at the firm, put the upside down to a “favorable regional mix and lighter comps”.
This is opposed to a change in “fundamentals that shape this market”, he said. He went on: “While it is exciting that RAN came in as expected and the full year outlook remains on track, the message has not changed: the RAN market is still growth-challenged as regional 5G coverage imbalances, slower data traffic growth, and monetization challenges continue to weigh on the broader growth prospects.”
According to Dell’Oro, strong growth in the RAN market in North America was enough to offset declines in the Caribbean, Latin America, China, the Middle East, and Africa. Market conditions have been “less favorable” outside of North America, where a fifth consecutive quarter of decline has been recorded. The top five RAN suppliers for revenues are: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Samsung. Outside of China, the list goes: Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and ZTE.
