MEC market fails to materialize, expectations lowered 20% for 2023

According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, the Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) market has failed to materialize as expected, and we are lowering expectations by more than 20 percent for 2023. In addition, the China Mobile Core Network (MCN) market hit a steep decline in 1Q 2023 weighing down the total market.

“The MEC market is not reaching the potential market as expected initially. Except for China, the big promise for MEC was addressing the needs of Enterprises. Several factors are contributing to the slower uptake,” stated Dave Bolan, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Some examples are: standalone private networks have garnered more attention and emphasis than MEC, which we define as extensions to Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) networks; lack of applications with well-defined return-on-investment (ROI); competition from Hyperscale Cloud Provider (HCP), and upcoming Wi-Fi 7. We believe Enterprises are evaluating all of these choices before moving forward with more aggressive MEC deployments. As a result, we are lowering the MEC forecast for 2023 by more than 20 percent from our previous forecast.

“The China market’s growth rate had a steep decline in 1Q 2023 as its build-out of 5G Standalone networks reached maturity and is projected to end 2023 with a negative growth rate, a first since we started tracking the China market revenues in 2018. However, the Worldwide market, excluding China, in 1Q 2023, got the year off to a good start with the highest growth rate since 4Q 2019. We expect positive growth rates throughout the year with continuing buildouts of 5G Standalone networks,” continued Bolan.

Additional highlights from the 1Q 2023 Mobile Core Network and Multi-Access Edge Computing Report include:

• The top MCN vendors worldwide for 1Q 2023 were Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE.
• The top MCN vendors worldwide, excluding China, for 1Q 2023 were Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia.
• The top 5G MCN vendors worldwide for 1Q 2023 were Huawei, Ericsson, ZTE, and Nokia.
• We count 43 Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) that have launched commercial 5G SA eMBB networks as of 1Q 2023.

DellOro