Ericsson and Huawei took the lead in 5G Core and Edge Platforms competitive ranking report from ABI Research, while Mavenir and Affirmed Networks are top challengers.
Ranking

Market Leaders: Huawei, Ericsson

Mainstream: Nokia, ZTE

Followers: Mavenir, Affirmed Networks (a Microsoft company), HPE, Samsung, Athonet

Huawei and Ericsson lead the mainstream vendor category for 5G core deployments. Huawei provides a competitive 5G core, edge, and AI capability that include both breadth and depth on a highly efficient foundation.

Ericsson is another leader in the overall rankings with a very focused strategy for 5G Core in particular, and cellular in general.

There is competition from other NEVs like Nokia and ZTE who continue to compete to establish a strong position in the market.

“Market dominance is contingent on vendor positioning and strategy, degree of focus on existing market requirements, and the size of the opportunity,” explains Don Alusha, Senior Analyst, 5G Core & Edge Networks at ABI Research.

Challenger Overall Ranking

Mavenir
Affirmed Networks (a Microsoft company)
HPE
Samsung
Athonet

Mavenir exploits disruptive innovation to disrupt and redefine the trajectory of serving the market. Mavenir occupies the top spot among challengers.

Affirmed Networks benefits significantly from a combination of a webscale, cloud-native 5G solution, and Microsoft’s public cloud capabilities.

Vendors like HPE, Samsung, and Athonet are all champions of openness, ecosystem disaggregation and are advocating new cloud-like commercial models. These vendors stand to play a key role in the coming years.

“CSPs assert that going forward, they will keep working with large NEVs but also introduce ‘added value’ from disruptor vendors. NEVs may enjoy an important competitive advantage for product performance and scale. But challenger vendors can potentially be more agile,” Alusha said.