Huawei has faced negative press in recent weeks, but a new report from Dell’Oro Group shows the company made notable gains in the global telecom equipment market.
The analyst firm’s latest data indicates Huawei now holds 29% of the telecom equipment market, surpassing competitors such as Nokia (including Alcatel-Lucent) and Ericsson. Huawei’s market share increased by eight percentage points since 2013.
In 2018, Huawei led other major equipment manufacturers including Nokia, Ericsson, Cisco, ZTE, Ciena, and Samsung. Together, Dell’Oro reports, these vendors accounted for roughly 80% of global service provider equipment revenue.
The overall market returned to modest growth in 2018 after three consecutive years of decline, expanding by about 1% year over year. This recovery was driven by stronger demand for broadband access, optical transport, microwave and mobile RAN technologies. Other segments—carrier IP, wireless packet core, service provider routers and carrier Ethernet switches—saw declines during the period.
Among major suppliers, Huawei stood out as the only vendor showing consistent growth across the market. ZTE’s share fell from around 10%, while other leading vendors remained largely unchanged.
Huawei also led the wireless packet core (WPC) market, reaching the top position for the first time in 2018. According to Dave Bolan, senior analyst at Dell’Oro Group, “The modest growth of the WPC market in 4Q 2018 was due to the 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) technologies that service providers are using for 4G networks, but also for EPC use in upcoming 5G network deployments.”
For the full year 2018, Huawei ranked as the number one vendor in the WPC market by revenue. However, Ericsson retained the top spot specifically in the EPC subsegment, which remained the largest portion of the WPC market.
The telecom industry convened at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, where conversation about 5G dominated. Several initiatives and findings highlighted 5G’s growing importance, including operator and vendor collaborations focused on 5G applications and research projecting that 5G connections could represent a significant share of global mobile connections by the middle of the next decade.
At the same time, scrutiny of Huawei—especially tensions between the company and the United States—remained intense. In response to U.S. pressure on allies to exclude Chinese 5G vendors, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei declared the company would not be crushed. The company also recently placed a full-page advertisement in a major U.S. newspaper urging readers to question prevailing narratives.
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