A new study by global tech strategists Juniper Research has ranked Ericsson as the leading RAN vendor in 2026, closely followed by Nokia and Huawei.
According to the “RAN Vendor Competitor Leaderboard”, Ericsson was chosen the top vendor because of its contributions to the O-RAN Alliance, alongside the increasing energy efficiency and performance of its AI-RAN solutions.
“AI-RAN, and the potential it promises, has added a new dimension to the RAN market – leading to new ecosystem players and strategic considerations for operators,” Juniper Research said in a press release. The report included Airspan Networks, Ericsson, 1Finity, Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, SynaXG, and ZTE as RAN vendors.
“AI-RAN is the next major growth engine in the RAN market, but the extra funding needed to adopt and scale AI-RAN will lead to operators initially deploying it to improve operational efficiencies on their networks and reduce the total cost of ownership,” explained Ardit Ballhysa, Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research.
The Importance of Platforms
The report identified that despite the market consolidating, with Mavenir exiting RAN hardware and NEC winding down its RAN ambitions, startup SynaXG has emerged as an entirely cloud-native AI-RAN vendor. SynaXG’s entry into the market exemplifies the importance operators are placing on RAN vendors’ platforms and software offerings.
While RAN vendors continue to differentiate their services through hardware offerings such as radio performance, massive MIMO, and spectral efficiency, greater emphasis is being placed on differentiating through platforms.
“This is because as networks become more software-driven, operators are relying more on vendors that can offer various solutions to meet their demands, such as cloud-native architecture, AI-enabled optimisation, and lifecycle management, through platforms such as Cloud RAN and AI-RAN,” Juniper Research stated in a press release.
