The addressable market for mobile networks in 2022 was estimated at EUR 51 billion, according to Finland‘s Nokia Corporation.
Nokia currently forecasts a market of €53 billion by 2023, reflecting year-on-year growth of approximately 5%, excluding the impact of exchange rate changes.
The company sees opportunities in 5G that go beyond building coverage and capacity for basic mobile voice and mobile broadband.
This includes industrial use cases for 5G with private wireless networks in various segments such as manufacturing and logistics, seaports and cargo handling, airports and airlines, vehicles and mining operations, utilities such as electricity, gas and water, smart agriculture and smart cities.
In addition, Nokia says it sees opportunities in 4G/5G network fragmentation, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) and evolving network architecture with Cloud RAN and O-RAN.
Also the company will support the deployment of 5G-Advanced networks with feature areas and solutions including Extended Reality (XR) and prepare capabilities for the introduction of 6G towards the end of the decade.
The RAN market in 2022 faced several challenges, including ongoing supply chain disruptions across the industry and geopolitical turbulence, largely and especially due to Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine.
However, outside Russia, Nokia increased its RAN sales in almost all markets.
Mobile networks
Like many others, Nokia was affected by industry-wide supply constraints, especially in the first half of 2022.
But Nokia was able to mitigate this impact, retaining all of its customers and its entire global RAN footprint in 2022.
Since the start of 2019, the company has added 41 new RAN customers in the CSP market, and another 28 CSP customers have increased their previous RAN share with Nokia.
The company also increased the conversion rate of 4G to 5G customers from 90% cumulative in Q4 2021 to 110% cumulative, excluding China, by the end of 2022.
In 2022, Nokia reached a cumulative 266 5G commercial agreements in the form of supply agreements, 83 of which were live 5G networks at the end of the year.
Nokia also grew its private wireless business, which has expanded to include more than 560 customers, 100 of which are 5G customers.
Nokia announced major new 5G deals in the CSP market this year, including those with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio in India, AT&T in Mexico, Ice in Norway, and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and XL Axiata in Indonesia.
The company also announced long-term expansion agreements with existing 5G customers, such as Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Mobile in Taiwan, and Orange and T-Mobile in Poland.
