Despite President Trump's efforts, Huawei emerged as the leading telecoms vendor in the first half of 2020, according to a report by Dell'Oro Group.
Dell'Oro Group's report, which encompassed various verticals such as broadband access, service provider routers, carrier Ethernet switches and radio access networks, said the overall telecommunications market had increased by 4% year-over-year in the first half of 2020. That 4% increase came on the heels of a 4% year-over-year decline in the first quarter of this year.
Following Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, ZTE, Cisco, Ciena and Samsung were the top vendors for the first half of this year. Dell'Oro Group Vice President Stefan Pongratz said in the report that revenue shared changed slightly in the first half of this year as Huawei and ZTE benefitted from large scale 5G rollouts across China despite the coronavirus pandemic.
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Revenue shares for the first half of this year across the top-five vendors showed that Huawei's market share increased to 31% from 28% a year ago. In June, the Federal Communications Commission formally designated Huawei and ZTE as threats to U.S. national security due to their close ties to the Chinese government.
On Friday, the FCC issued a report that said it would cost small carriers about $1.8 billion to forklift Huawei and ZTE gear out of their networks, although that amount could be offset by federal assistance.
For the first half of 2020, Nokia's revenue shares dropped from 16% a year ago to 14%, while Ericsson stayed the course at 14%. ZTE's revenue shares increased from 9% a year ago to 11% while Cisco dropped from 7% to 6% over the same time frame.
Overall, double-digit growth in mobile infrastructure offset declining investments in broadband access, microwave and optical transport, and service provider routers and consumer electronics equipment (CES.)
Dell'Oro said the first half results were stronger than expected, driven by a strong rebound in China across multiple technology segments including 5G RAN, 5G Core, GPON, service provider router and CES, and optical transport.
Another factor for the 4% increase was the stabilization of global supply chains that were disrupted at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Dell'Oro Groups analysts are bullish on the remainder of the year, despite the coronavirus.
"Even though the pandemic is still inflicting high human and economic losses, the Dell’Oro analyst team believes the more upbeat trends in the second quarter will extend to the second half, propelling the overall telecom equipment market to advance 5% in 2020," Dell'Oro Group said in its Tuesday press release.