Open RAN and Cloud RAN revenues are coming in down in 2024 along with the broader RAN market, but the long-term trajectory remains healthy, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group.
“Our long-term position remains mostly unchanged,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President of RAN market research at the Dell’Oro Group. “Even with ongoing challenges and delays, we still anticipate that most operators will gradually incorporate more openness, virtualization, intelligence, and automation into their RAN roadmaps. At the same time, the impact will be mixed. While O-RAN fronthaul interfaces are being adopted and Open RAN is accelerating the shift towards vRAN/Cloud RAN, this vision that Open RAN will catalyze multi-vendor RAN, bring down prices, and change the vendor dynamics is fading,” continued Pongratz.
Additional highlights from the February 2025 Open RAN Report:
- Short-term projections have been revised downward due to a lower starting point and ongoing uncertainty surrounding the transition from “O-RAN ready” to Open RAN.
- The transition to Open RAN is a gradual process and the benefits and challenges of Open RAN vary across the RAN, influencing the adoption pace of O-RAN radios and vRAN baseband. The long-term trajectory is for Open RAN and Multi-vendor RAN to comprise >25 percent and <10 percent of the total 2029 RAN market, respectively.
- Purpose-built RAN to lose roughly about 20 percent in value by 2029.
- North America and Asia Pacific combined are projected to drive around 80 percent of the vRAN forecast.