Exact Ventures recently reported that in 4Q23, the total 5G Core (both 5G SA and NSA) and 4G EPC market increased 45% sequentially to $1.0 billion, due to seasonal strength, with demand surging in the final months of the calendar year as operators exhaust their capital budgets and salespeople push to meet their quotas. In 4Q23, market was up 16% versus 4Q22, as 72% growth in 5G SA revenues and 29% growth in 5G NSA sales more than offset an 18% drop in 4G EPC sales. 

For the full year 2023, 5G SA accounted for about one-third of the total packet core market, with half of this coming from China. 5G NSA accounted for about 30% with 4G EPC accounting for the remainder. North America, usually a key market for leading technologies like 5G SA, accounted for just 14% of that market for 2023.

Outside of China and a few operators in North America and India, progress on 5G SA core remains slow, yet the functionality that 5G SA core enables, remains critical to help drive new operator business models, enable automation, and modernize current services. We expect strong growth in 5G SA network functions in 2024 albeit coming from a relatively small base in 2023.

For the full-year 2023, the market share leaders for 5G SA were: Huawei with 58% share on the strength in their domestic market, where the company captured over 80% of the 5G SA core market. In terms of worldwide 5G SA market share, Huawei was followed by: Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Mavenir, respectively.

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