Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC, and Mavenir topped what is an increasingly complex open radio access network (RAN) market that is gaining momentum but is still just a fraction of the broader RAN ecosystem.

Dell’Oro Group reported those four vendors gleaned the most open RAN-related revenues during the first nine months of the year, with Asia-Pacific and North America accounting for 95% of those revenues. The research firm said the open RAN space generated twice as much in revenue through the first three quarters of this year compared to last year and “continues to move forward and accelerate at a faster pace than expected.”

“While commercial Open RAN revenues continue to surprise on the upside, the underlying message that we have communicated now for some time now has not changed and remains mixed,” Dell’Oro Group VP Stefan Pongratz noted in a statement on the report. “Early adopters are embracing the movement toward more openness but at the same time there is more uncertainty when it comes to the early majority operator and the implications for the broader RAN supplier landscape now with non-multi-vendor deployments driving a significant portion of the year-to-date open RAN market.”

The four vendors mentioned have all been scoring pieces of different open RAN initiatives, including work by Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, Rakuten Mobile, Dish Network in the U.S., and European telecom giant Vodafone.

Specific to Q3, LightCounting Market Research noted in a separate report that open RAN sales were “weak again” due to carrier deployment schedules. The firm said Rakuten Mobile, which is driving open RAN deployments in Asia-Pacific, was ahead of schedule on its build, something that the carrier discussed during its most recent earnings call.

LightCounting added that open RAN deployments by Dish Network and delays by Germany’s 1&1 network also led to the down quarter.

Dell’Oro Group predicts open RAN will account for between 6% and 10% of the overall RAN market by the end of next year. It expects that growth to slow “reflecting the likelihood that the sum of new brownfield deployments will be able to offset more challenging comparisons with the early adopters.”

The research firm explained open RAN growth has “so far had a limited impact on the broader RAN market concentration.” Its numbers indicated that the five largest RAN vendors (Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Samsung) witnessed a miniscule drop in their market share between last year and the first three quarters of 2022.

LightCounting also noted that the Q3 global wireless infrastructure market dipped 1% sequentially and was down 8% year over year. The 5G RAN space grew sequentially and was the only category that “sustained” the broader ecosystem.

“Overall, market dynamics continued to operate at equilibrium with the unabated execution of the 5G contracts awarded between [the second half of 2020] and [the first half of 2021],” LightCounting Chief Analyst Stéphane Téral noted in a statement. “However, this also means that we are reaching the end of this first 5G wave, which confirms our view that the global wireless infrastructure market is peaking this year.”