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Freedom251 › Blog › 5G

Who Replaced Huawei? Ericsson and Nokia Lead UK 5G, but Huawei Still Leads Global RAN

By Freedom251 Team · · 5 min read

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No single company replaced Huawei across the global telecom market. In the UK’s 5G radio access network (RAN), Ericsson has become the largest supplier and operators mainly use Ericsson and Nokia as Huawei equipment is removed. Worldwide, however, Huawei remained the top RAN supplier by revenue in 2025. The answer changes with the country, network layer and measure being compared.

What “replaced Huawei” means in practice

Huawei’s removal from a particular network is not the same as its departure from the global telecom market. A country may require operators to remove its equipment, while other countries continue buying from it. And a replacement in the radio network does not automatically mean the same supplier took over the mobile core.

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  • Geography: A UK procurement change is not a description of worldwide purchasing.
  • Network layer: RAN and mobile core are separate markets, with different supplier rankings.
  • Measure: Revenue share, equipment installed at sites, a contract award and a government removal requirement measure different things.
  • Time: A 2020 policy baseline, 2024 revenue shares and a 2025 market ranking should not be treated as one simultaneous snapshot.

Who took Huawei’s place in the UK?

Ericsson and Nokia are the principal suppliers in the UK’s Huawei replacement process. The later independent UK review says Ericsson took Huawei’s place as the largest UK 5G RAN supplier, while operators primarily use Ericsson and/or Nokia. It also reports that Huawei’s remaining UK share was set to fall to zero by 2027 under government direction. That is a UK-specific policy trajectory, not evidence that Huawei has exited telecoms globally.

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The UK government’s 2020 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy described the consequence of removing Huawei without other measures: the country would rely on Nokia and Ericsson for mobile access equipment. The later review describes the replacement procurement and says no new entrant had reached scale in the UK 5G RAN market.

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A dated procurement example

In a September 2025 report on VodafoneThree, the European Commission described long-term Ericsson and Nokia agreements worth about £2 billion combined. Nokia was to supply equipment for around 7,000 sites under an eight-year contract. This illustrates one operator’s procurement; it does not establish that every UK operator chose the same suppliers or contract structure.

Who leads the global RAN market?

Huawei remained the worldwide RAN revenue leader in 2025, according to Dell’Oro Group’s February 2026 ranking. Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung followed, in that order. Dell’Oro reported that Huawei and Nokia gained ground during 2025, Ericsson and Samsung were stable, and ZTE’s RAN revenue share fell. Its public release did not provide exact vendor percentages, so the ranking should not be converted into invented shares.

Omdia’s 2024 revenue estimates show why the region matters. The worldwide figures include China; the China-excluded figures produce a different order. They are revenue shares for 2024, published by Omdia in 2025, not shares of installed sites or network coverage.

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Vendor Worldwide RAN revenue share, 2024 RAN revenue share excluding China, 2024
Huawei 34.2% 20.9%
Ericsson 25.7% 36.0%
Nokia 17.6% 24.7%
ZTE 11.4% 2.9%
Samsung 4.8% 6.9%
NEC 0.9% not stated in Omdia’s 2025 report for this comparison
Fujitsu 0.5% not stated in Omdia’s 2025 report for this comparison
Other vendors 5.0% not stated in Omdia’s 2025 report for this comparison

These are separate market views with different geographic coverage, not competing estimates of one identical market. The higher China-excluded shares for Ericsson and Nokia reflect the importance of regional market mix to any claim about who “replaced” Huawei.

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RAN is not the mobile core

RAN equipment, including radio units and base stations, connects phones to the network. The mobile core handles network functions such as authentication, mobility and packet-data services. A supplier can have a different position in each layer, so a RAN replacement does not establish who replaced Huawei in core networks.

Omdia’s 2024 5G core revenue shares, published in 2025, put Huawei first, followed by Ericsson and ZTE. These percentages refer to 5G core revenue, not RAN.

Vendor 5G core revenue share, 2024
Huawei 26.5%
Ericsson 21.7%
ZTE 20.4%
Nokia 10.1%
NEC 5.6%
Samsung 5.0%
Other vendors 10.7%

Omdia’s March 2026 update reported that 5G packet-core investment rose 83% year over year in Q4 2025 and that 88 operators had launched 5G Standalone networks. Those figures indicate activity and deployment in the core and standalone 5G ecosystem; they do not change the 2024 vendor shares or identify a universal replacement for Huawei.

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Are new suppliers replacing the incumbents?

Not at scale in the UK 5G RAN market described by the independent review. Its account is primarily one of Ericsson and Nokia gaining share as operators bought replacement equipment, rather than a new entrant taking over Huawei’s position. That distinction matters: a company appearing in a market discussion, a trial or an older global ranking is not necessarily supplying live networks at scale.

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The UK’s 2020 diversification strategy identified ZTE and Samsung as the next-largest suppliers after Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei in the figures it cited at the time. It also discussed NEC, Fujitsu and emerging suppliers Mavenir and Parallel Wireless. Those were historical policy-era observations: the strategy said alternatives did not then offer the full range of RAN equipment. Its cited figures—over 80% of global RAN share for Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei together, with ZTE at 11% and Samsung at 5%—belong to that 2020 context and should not be blended with Omdia’s 2024 estimates or Dell’Oro’s 2025 ranking.

Open RAN is a possible route to more choice, not a wholesale replacement today

Open RAN uses open interfaces intended to let network components from different suppliers work together. The UK review says all four UK operators were trialling it to varying degrees, but live deployment remained limited; Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei still provided nearly all deployed UK 5G RAN equipment at the time of that review.

Open interfaces alone do not guarantee a diverse supplier base. Operators may take on more integration and operational work, and a deployment led by one incumbent can remain concentrated even if it uses open interfaces. Broader adoption depends on demonstrated performance, security, commercial viability, interoperability and the ability to integrate equipment reliably.

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How to assess a claim about Huawei’s replacement

Before comparing two suppliers or market figures, check that they refer to the same scope:

  • Place: Is the claim worldwide, China-excluded or about one country?
  • Network layer: Does it cover RAN or the mobile core?
  • Evidence type: Is it revenue share, a supplier ranking, a named operator deployment, contracted sites or a mandated removal?
  • Period: What year do the figures measure, and when were they published?
  • Deployment status: Does the supplier have live equipment at scale, or is the evidence a trial, strategy document or market ranking?

Keeping those distinctions intact gives the most accurate answer: Ericsson and Nokia are the main UK 5G RAN alternatives in the removal process, while Huawei remained a global RAN leader and led Omdia’s 2024 5G core revenue ranking.

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5GEricssonHuaweiMobile NetworksNokiaOpen RANtelecom

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