The worldwide sales of Virtualized Open RAN technologies are forecasted to grow at double-digit rates over the next five years with cumulative Open RAN investments – including hardware, software, and firmware excluding services – projected to surpass $5 B over the forecast period, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group.
“At a first glance it might appear overly optimistic with a baseline scenario suggesting a new technology, which remains relatively untested and some officials believe would need a decade to get off the ground, would be able to become a billion-dollar market comprising a sizable portion of the overall RAN segment in just half a decade,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President and analyst with the Dell’Oro Group. “At the same time, the momentum is improving, and we have adjusted the outlook upward to reflect a confluence of factors including promising results from initial commercial deployments, growing support from the incumbent RAN suppliers, and increased geopolitical uncertainty acting as a catalyst for operators to rethink their supplier strategies,” continued Pongratz.
Additional highlights:
Cumulative Virtualized RAN revenues—here defined as the proportion of RAN baseband/compute capex that will utilize general-purpose processors for CU and/or DU—are projected to approach $3 B to 5 B over the next five years.
Cumulative Open RAN radio shipments – including macro and small cells – are projected to surpass 1 M over the forecast period.
