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 reports so that we can gather many details about 2024 and provide 2025 outlook and a 5-year RAN forecast. This report includes 4G and 5G base station (BTS) numbers and RAN vendor market shares and analysis.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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