This report focuses on Japan’s wireless infrastructure market and analyzes the implications of the introduction of Rakuten Mobile and the Japanese government’s open RAN push. The publication date is scheduled a few weeks after the 4 services providers (KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, Rakuten Mobile, and Softbank) provide their interim report so that we can gather many details about 2024 and provide 2025 outlook and a 5-year RAN forecast. This report includes base station (BTS) numbers and RAN vendor market shares and analysis.
- ABSTRACT
- KEY TAKEAWAYS
- 2024 SAW A SHIFT FROM 5G TO 4G, BUT IT WAS NOT ENOUGH TO KEEP THE MARKET IN GROWTH TERRITORY
- We did not expected such a big 4G jump, that’s the tourism success effect!
- A combination of FOREX and low 4G ASP dragged actual sales 12% below our forecast
- There is still no strong motivation to invest in 5G
- Open RAN BTS accounted for 75% of total units deployed in 2024
- In this context, Ericsson stayed #1 and slightly increased its share
- Nokia continued to close the gap with Ericsson
- For third spot, NEC and Samsung are neck and neck
- Rakuten Symphony moved ahead of Fujitsu, which had a bad year in both its domestic and international
- markets
- DESPITE A MAJOR SHIFT TO 5G, 2025 IS LOOKING DOWN FOR BOTH TOTAL UNITS AND SALES
- After the surge, we expect a steep decline in 4G units
- Conversely, 5G units should grow this year, followed by a surge in 2027
- The MIC’s roadmad remains in effect through the end of the year
- Propelled by 5G, the RAN market will peak in 2027 and then fall again
- Outdoor 5G deployments will remain above 70% throughout the forecast period
- OPEN VIRTUAL RAN IS THE NAME OF THE GAME AND WILL ACCOUNT FOR 95% OF TOTAL 5G RAN UNITS BY 2030
- The open vRAN ramp up is expected this year
- The 4 service providers pointed out that the availability of the RAN intelligent controller (RIC) is
- fundamental for the success of open vRAN moving forward
- Japan’s open RAN-based 5G BTS configuration simplifies the counting process, it is site counting
- Japan’s 5G looks like 1 site = 1 CU (including the DU)
- JAPAN IS SHOWING THE WORLD WHAT A 5G OPEN VRAN ISLAND LOOKS LIKE…
- OVER THE PAST 3 YEARS, RAKUTEN SYMPHONY QUICKLY EXPANDED AND STARTED TO CONQUER THE WORLD…
- The telecom world welcomes Symworld, the NF App marketplace
- It was already obvious from the beginiing with its initiatives in the U.S. and Germany that Rakuten Mobile had bigger ambitions than solely acting as Japan’s 4th mobile operator.
- Qualcomm came to the 5G open ran massive mimo rescue
- AT&T turned to Rakuten Symphony for network planning help
- Cisco brought its mobile, switching & routing, and automation portfolio to Rakuten Symphony
- Rakuten Symphony added robin.io to its quiver
- Rakuten Symphony selected Nokia’s cloud native software as first Symworld partner
- Perhaps the icing on the cake? Ajit Pai joined the party
- Rakuten Symphony went to Africa with MTN
- At MWC23, Rakuten launched its Symware 2.0 software
- Lastly, this year, Rakuten established Rakuten Tech Center in Paris, France
- DESPITE THE DEPARTURE OF HIGH-PROFILE EXECUTIVES IN 2023, RAKUTEN SYMPHONY’S CONQUEST OF THE WORLD IS CONTINUING
- At MWC24, the signature of a letter of intent and a memorandum of understanding highlighted the momentum
- And at MWC25, among many announcements, Rakuten Symphony said that Airspan, Cisco and Tech Mahindra were the first partners for its open RAN licensing program
- THIS MOMENTUM MADE FUJITSU AND NEC TOP RU SUPPLIERS AND SI CHAMPIONS BUT THINGS CHANGED IN 2023
- Since the start of Rakuten Mobile’s network buildout in 2H19, Japan’s domestic champions Fujitsu and NEC have been busy both at home and in international markets
- However, we expect the 2 Japanese vendors to turn the corner this year
- KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, AND SOFTBANK ARE ACTIVELY PUSHING THE OPEN RAN AGENDA
- In February 2022, KDDI successfully turned on the world’s first 5G SA open vRAN site
- In March 2022, NTT docomo adopted the Rakuten Symphony playbook
- Docomo’s Shared Open Lab leverages its OREC initiatives
- At MWC23, docomo rebranded its OREC project OREX
- At MWC24, docomo and NEC launched OREX SAI
- Since, OREX SAI has showed some international momentum
- At MWC24, SoftBank, NEC and VMware announced that they have jointly verified RAN virtualization by converging telco cloud with an O-RAN architecture
- But as VMware is gone, then came Red Hat and AITRAS
- Despite its detour to AI-RAN, Softbank remained committed to O-RAN and signed a MoU with Ericsson
- AND LASTLY, DOCOMO, KDDI, SOFTBANK AND RAKUTEN MOBILE FORMED OTIC TO COMBINE EFFORTS AND ACCELERATE OPEN RAN ADOPTION
- 2018 WAS THE YEAR JAPAN DECIDED TO SHAKE UP ITS OLIGOPOLISTIC MOBILE MARKET, WHICH KICKED OFF THE OPEN RAN AGENDA
- INFLUENCED BY THE U.S., THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT QUICKLY ADOPTED THE OPEN RAN AGENDA…
- …AND GIVING INCENTIVES TO FUJITSU AND NEC TO STRENGTHEN THEIR MARKET POSITION
- THE U.S. ALSO ASKED NTT AND NEC TO BE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF THE OPEN RAN POLICY COALITION
- AND LASTLY, THE U.S. AND JAPAN ARE COLLABORATING ON MULTIPLE FRONTS, INCLUDING 6G
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