The global telecom infrastructure equipment market posted a 6% year-over-year jump in revenue during the third quarter of 2021, but annual growth is now projected to decline from 8% in 2021 to 2% in 2022, according to Dell’Oro Group.

The market research still projects the telecom equipment market, which includes broadband access, microwave and optical transport, mobile core, radio access network (RAN), routers and switches, to surpass $100 billion next year. 

Huawei remains the industry leader, but 2021 marks the first year of market share erosion for the Chinese vendor. It’s total market share slid almost 2% through Q3 2021 on an annualized basis, bringing it back to its 2019 levels with slightly more than 28% of the total market, Dell’Oro Group reports.

Nokia maintains an increasingly narrow lead over Ericsson, but just barely. The Finnish vendor posted its third consecutive year of market share declines, but the rate of deceleration is slowing. 

Ericsson’s market share grew less than 1% year over year during Q3, and both Nokia and Ericsson ended the period with slightly less than 15% market shares each, the report found.

The fourth-largest vendor, ZTE, posted its third-consecutive year of market share gains, landing almost 11% of the market through Q3 this year. Meanwhile, Cisco reversed three consecutive years of market share erosion, ending the first nine months of 2021 with almost 6% of the market.

Samsung surpassed Ciena for the No. 6 spot this year, pushing its total share of the market above 3%. Finally, Ciena’s market share remained flat at 3%. 

The top seven vendors comprise about 80% of the total market, and ZTE and Samsung are both “trending upward,” according to Dell’Oro Group. 

Despite this year’s slide, Huawei’s control of the telecom equipment market now dates back to 2014 when Nokia barely edged it out for the top spot in Dell’Oro Group’s annual rankings. Nokia’s market share has declined every year since then and Huawei posted annual year-over-year gains until 2021.

“Ongoing efforts by the U.S. government to curb the rise of Huawei is starting to show in the numbers, especially outside of China. At the same time, Huawei continued to dominate the global market, still nearly as large as Ericsson and Nokia combined,” Dell’Oro Group VP Stefan Pongratz wrote in a recap of the firm’s latest findings.