Amid Intensifying Anti-Huawei Campaign
Samsung Electronics has emerged as the No. 1 player in the 5G telecom equipment market amid a global anti-Huawei campaign.
Samsung Electronics ranked first with a 37 percent market share in the first quarter of this year, said a recent report by Dell’Oro, a research company specializing in the communication equipment market. Samsung was followed by Huawei (28 percent), Ericsson (27 percent) and Nokia (8 percent).
This is the first time Samsung Electronics has placed first in the global market for mobile telecom equipment. The company’s share of the 5G equipment market was a mere 6.6 percent last year. For the whole of last year, Huawei ranked first with a 31 percent market share, followed by Ericsson (29.2 percent), Nokia (23.3 percent), ZTE (7.4 percent) and Samsung Electronics.
Samsung’s market share surged as it supplied 5G equipment to major U.S. 5G operators such as Verizon, AT&T and Sprint in addition to the three Korean mobile communication companies. In particular, major telecom companies in the United States have rejected Huawei and picked Samsung as a supplier of 5G equipment.
As Huawei is being driven out of Western markets, European telecom equipment makers and Samsung Electronics are expected to increase their shares of the telecom market.
"We will achieve a 20 percent market share in the global 5G communication equipment market by 2020," said Kim Young-ki, head of Samsung's network business. The key to attaining this goal is to secure business partners in the Japanese and European markets.
"Although we ranked first in the 5G equipment market with a 37 percent share in the previous two quarters, we recorded a single-digit share in the entire telecom equipment market from 2G to 5G last year,” a Samsung official said. "It is important to increase our shares in markets other than Korea and the United States."