Huawei and Ericsson are leading the mainstream vendor category for 5G core deployments according to an assessment by global tech market advisory firm ABI Research on the services offered by nine 5G Core and Edge players. 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. However, there is fierce 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.
Competing very fiercely with NEVs are pure-play software vendors who offer disruptive innovation and agility. These players are shaping their growth businesses with what constitutes “discontinuous innovation”. These vendors do not attempt to bring better products in the market. Rather, they disrupt and redefine the trajectory by introducing solutions that, in the early stages, may not be as performant as currently available products. “But innovation from these players offers other benefits—typically, they are simpler, offer convenience and flexibility, and less expensive products,” Alusha points out. ABI positions challenger vendors in a supplementary competitive ranking. In ranking order, they are as follows:
Challenger Overall Ranking: Mavenir, Affirmed Networks (a Microsoft company), HPE, Samsung and Athonet
Mavenir continues to exploit disruptive innovation to disrupt and redefine the trajectory of serving the market. Mavenir occupies the top spot among challengers. Affirmed Networks is a close second in the rankings and 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.
