Nokia’s market share improved by 3% in Microwave Transmission market in Q1 2020

The market analysis and research firm, Dell’Oro Group published their quarterly “Telecom Equipment Market” for the first quarter of this year. The report in whole took the Broadband Access, Microwave & Optical Transport, Mobile Core & Radio Access Network (RAN) and Service Provider (SP) Router & Carrier Ethernet (CE) Switch markets into consideration.

The telecom equipment market saw a 4% decline year-over-year (Q1 2019 vs. Q1 2020). In Q1 2020, Nokia held 15% of the total revenue shares of the market. However, it saw a 1% drop in its revenue shares compared to that of full-year 2019.

You can see in the graph that the gap between Nokia and Ericsson has been decreasing constantly over the past few years, and Ericsson is nearing to Nokia’s position in the overall telecom equipment market.

Huawei being at the top held 28% and Cisco held 6% of the total revenue share, but both also witnessed a 1% drop. Ericsson neither saw a drop nor a rise, it remained intact with a 14% revenue share, just below Nokia. The only equipment maker that advanced in terms of revenue share is ZTE and held 11% with a 1% rise.

Now for the first time, Nokia overtook Ericsson to take the second place in the Microwave Transmission market in Q4 2019. Continuing the trend, Nokia’s market share improved with a 3% rise in Q1 2020. Also, Nokia was the only vendor among the large manufacturers to grow its Q1 2020 revenue share year-over-year.

The revenues of the Mobile Core & RAN market improved at a single-digit rate, accounting for nearly half of the whole market. While the combined revenues of Broadband Access, Microwave Transport, and SP Router & CE Switch markets decreased at a double-digit rate, accounting for only one-third of the overall market.

According to Dell’Oro Group, the COVID-19 pandemic had some real impact on the market, along with the supply chain disruptions and weakened demand. The data traffic did grow in the past few months, but it did not lead to enough demand for network capacity upgrades among the service providers.