Winter Came For Open RAN in 2024 – Market Dropped 83%
US based analysts Mobile Experts have released a new forecast for Open RAN this week. The research provides quite a dramatic insight into just how difficult a year 2024 has been for Open RAN vendors, in what is still considered a challenger technology in the RAN space.
As the report notes, following the completion of the first large scale Open RAN deployments on greenfield networks from the likes of DISH in the US and Rakuten in Japan, new deployments have screeched to a halt in 2024. This has led to a staggering 83% drop for the Open RAN market. Offering hope to the beleaguered market however, Joe Madden, Principal Analyst at Mobile Experts, commented: “Our revenue chart for Open RAN looks like the Grand Canyon”, pointing at a return to healthy growth in the future.
The rapid decline in the market highlights an important point often raised by Open RAN critics. While many established operators have vocally advocated for the technology, brownfield deployments have been limited in their scale. This is set to change according to Madden, citing the new commitments from major mobile operators made in 2024. “Now the market will transition to upgrades on legacy networks” said Madden, before adding: “But legacy networks will use Open RAN differently”.
The companies that built those legacy networks will also use Open RAN differently. With growth expected to resume in 2025 (a view echoed in other research published this year), the key question remains who will drive it and who will benefit from it. Given their pivot towards Open RAN, established vendors like Ericsson (who recently signed a record breaking $14 billion dollar network deal with AT&T predicated on it being “Open RAN capable”) will understandably account for a large part of that growth. Just how large it is will have very important implications for the size and diversity of the Open RAN ecosystem in the coming years.
If proponents truly want to deliver on the multi-vendor Open RAN promise, operators will need to move a bit faster towards embracing new market entrants into their networks.
