5G New Radio Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends and Forecast (2026 - 2031)

Global 5G New Radio Market Trends and Insights

Surging Mobile-Data Traffic and Video Consumption

Global 4K and 8K video streaming, augmented-reality apps, and cloud gaming platforms drove average monthly data usage per subscriber 40% higher in 2024, exhausting 4G capacity in dense urban corridors.^{[1]Eric Parsons, “Mobility Report November 2024,” Ericsson, ERICSSON.COM} Network operators report peak-hour congestion that stresses the limits of spectral efficiency, hastening 5G migration schedules in North America, Europe, and key Asian cities. Sub-6 GHz cells enhance coverage and indoor penetration, while mmWave layers provide high-density capacity for stadiums, transport hubs, and metropolitan hotspots. Traffic forecasts that predict a threefold increase in data by 2028 underpin continued investment in carrier aggregation, massive MIMO radios, and small-cell densification. As immersive media gains mainstream adoption, operators position network slicing and edge compute resources to deliver guaranteed throughput and latency. These measures translate directly into accelerated orders for 5G New Radio market hardware and orchestration software, cementing demand visibility through the medium term.

Spectrum Liberalization in Mid-Band and High-Band Ranges

The World Radiocommunication Conference 2023 assigned the 6425-7125 MHz frequency range to International Mobile Telecommunications and affirmed contiguous 26 GHz blocks for regional regulators, unlocking new capacity for enhanced mobile broadband services.^{[2]ITU Radiocommunication Bureau, “WRC-23 Outcomes,” ITU.INT} Harmonization reduces equipment variance, lowering radio-unit costs by up to 15% in Europe. In the United States, successive Federal Communications Commission auctions, coupled with National Telecommunications and Information Administration spectrum-sharing frameworks, have opened once-restricted military bands for commercial 5G operations. The combined policy arc supplies operators with wider channels that underpin extreme-band deployments and fixed-wireless-access rollouts. Spectrum certainty supports long-range procurement contracts, shielding vendors from boom-and-bust cycles, and sustains the 5G New Radio market through predictable, multi-year investment plans.

Network Virtualization-Driven Cost Efficiencies

Cloud-native network functions reduce operating expenditure by 30-40% compared to proprietary hardware stacks, according to trials among Tier-1 European carriers.^{[3]K. Maeda, “Cloud-Native RAN Economics,” Nokia, NOKIA.COM} Open-RAN enables the disaggregation of radio, distributed-unit, and centralized-unit elements, allowing them to be mixed and matched across suppliers, which spurs component innovation and drives down unit prices. Automated orchestration reduces manual configuration and maintenance visits, resulting in a 25% reduction in field-service costs in 2024. Dynamic slicing permits differentiated quality-of-service tiers, unlocking fresh revenue streams ranging from enterprise SLA products to premium consumer gaming bundles. Virtualization thus creates a positive feedback loop: lower costs encourage broader coverage, which in turn enlarges the 5G New Radio market base.

Government-Led Industrial Digitalization Programs

The European Union earmarked EUR 7.5 billion (USD 8.4 billion) for 5G corridors and factory modernization under its Digital Decade initiative. Germany subsidizes up to 50% of qualified private-network expenditures to accelerate Industry 4.0 transformation, while India’s telecom policy aims to cover industrial clusters nationwide by 2026. South Korea, Japan, and China extend similar preferential financing and tax rebate schemes. Public-sector support lowers investment risk for manufacturers and accelerates proofs of concept. As pilots mature into scaled deployments, factory automation, AGVs, and real-time analytics requirements enlarge the 5G New Radio market, especially for standalone-core and edge-compute integration projects.

Supply-Chain Chipset Shortages Beyond 2025

Tight 7-nm and 5-nm fabrication capacity continues to constrain mmWave radio-front-end and beamform-IC supply, especially for discrete RF modules. Lead times stretched past 40 weeks in 2024, prompting operators to defer high-band deployments and prioritize mid-band rollouts. Vendor diversification reduces exposure; yet, few foundries can meet the power-efficiency profile required for extreme-band phased arrays. Component scarcity, therefore, caps peak throughput in early commercial 5G New Radio networks and tempers near-term revenue expansion in the 5G New Radio market.

High Total Cost of Ownership for Greenfield Standalone Rollouts

Full standalone coverage in low-density geographies can require USD 200-400 million in upfront capex, eclipsing projected revenue for many rural and emerging-market carriers. Fiber backhaul gaps, tower leasing fees, and core-network overhauls add further expense. Operators thus maintain non-standalone overlays that limit advanced 5G functionality and delay monetization of network slicing. Until financing vehicles or network-sharing frameworks mature, the 5G New Radio market must contend with phased implementation schedules outside Tier-1 operators.

Segment Analysis

By Frequency Band: Extreme Spectrum Unlocks New-Use Cases

Sub-6 GHz commanded 64.12% of the 5G New Radio market in 2025 because its favorable propagation profile supports fast nationwide rollouts. The band maintains essential rural reach, indoor penetration, and cost-efficient macro-cell economics, anchoring broad coverage for consumer broadband and voice. Operators favor reallocating refarmed 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz holdings to 5G, complementing newly auctioned 3.5 GHz or C-band channels to raise capacity. The result is a balanced network design that maximizes the reuse of existing tower grids.

Extreme-band allocations above 40 GHz represent the fastest-growing slice, advancing at 26.15% CAGR as spectrum decisions mature. The 5G New Radio market size for this segment benefits from wider 800 MHz to 2 GHz channels, which deliver multi-gigabit peak speeds. Enhanced beamforming, subarray architectures, and RF-silicon process improvements enable a coverage radius of nearly 500 meters in dense urban layouts. Holographic communications, extended-reality streaming, and high-resolution sensor backhaul rely on these capacities. Regulatory harmonization across the European Union, South Korea, and parts of the United States assists vendor scale economies, trimming radio-unit costs and accelerating city-center densification projects.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By Deployment Mode: Standalone Functionality Scales

Non-standalone architecture retained 65.05% revenue share in 2025, reflecting its rapid time-to-market advantage. Leveraging 4G LTE cores, operators launched 5G radios with limited additional capex, satisfying consumer demand for higher downlink speeds. This pragmatic path yielded early service differentiation and accelerated device adoption. It also gave operators margin headroom as usage surged.

Standalone deployments are projected to log a 25.6% CAGR to 2031, supported by cloud-native cores and service-based interfaces that enable end-to-end slicing. The shift unlocks ultra-reliable, low-latency communications for manufacturing, logistics, and public safety ecosystems. Network exposure functions simplify the creation of API-based services, broadening revenue diversification. Greenfield digital-native operators in India and fixed-wireless specialists in the United States move directly to standalone networks, bypassing the complexities of transitional non-standalone networks. As device portfolios with release-17 firmware proliferate, the 5G New Radio market expands via premium enterprise offers that justify higher ARPU.

By Component: Software Surpasses Hardware Weight

gNB hardware still accounted for 47.15% of 2025 spending, reflecting the physical necessity of antennas, remote radio heads, and integrated baseband units for each cell site. Vendors deliver turnkey solutions optimized for energy efficiency, which is vital for operators facing rising electricity tariffs. Advanced M-MIMO arrays with up to 64 transmit and receive chains remain essential for maximizing spectral efficiency in mid-band deployments.

Software revenue, however, leads growth at 25.98% CAGR. Virtual RAN functions, orchestration platforms, AI-based network-optimization tools, and security analytics now represent the largest component group by value. Operators embrace pay-as-you-grow license models that align expense with traffic scale. The 5G New Radio market size for software accelerates further as integrated development kits enable third-party ISVs to launch domain-specific slices. Services complete the stack, covering systems integration, managed optimization, and lifecycle support essential for operators lacking in-house expertise.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

By End-User Industry: Manufacturing Outpaces Telecom Capex

Telecom operators accounted for 57.85% of the total 5G New Radio market expenditure in 2025, unsurprising given their role in national coverage builds. Consumer broadband, mobile voice, and IoT connectivity underpin recurring revenue, keeping operator capex resilient. Yet manufacturing overtakes other verticals in growth, rising 27.4% annually through the forecast as factory automation takes precedence. Private licensed spectrum, deterministic latency, and on-premises data sovereignty persuade plant managers to migrate from wired fieldbus and Wi-Fi systems.

Public-safety agencies are accelerating upgrades to mission-critical broadband, utilizing isolated slices for push-to-talk, body-worn camera feeds, and unmanned drone control. Transport and logistics networks adopt standalone 5G to support autonomous yard trucks, smart-port cranes, and real-time fleet telemetry. Utilities implement wide-area sensor grids for dynamic load balancing and outage localization. Each vertical adds differentiated requirements such as time-sensitive networking, packet-delay budget compliance, or encryption wrappers that propel specialist software vendors into the 5G New Radio market.

Geography Analysis

North America led the 5G New Radio market, accounting for 37.95% of the revenue share in 2025, driven by favorable spectrum auctions and capital intensity among Tier-1 carriers. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile collectively invested more than USD 30 billion in 2024 to accelerate standalone deployments, with a focus on enterprise edge services and fixed wireless access. The Federal Communications Commission’s mid-band auctions and NTIA’s spectrum-sharing roadmaps ensured contiguous, high-capacity holdings for operators. Cloud-native cores entered commercial service by mid-2024, enabling differentiated SLA-backed products and lifting average revenue per user.

Asia-Pacific stands out for velocity, logging a 26.4% CAGR. China is expected to have erected 3.5 million 5G sites by the end of 2024, extending coverage into rural areas under the “Broadband Countryside” plan. ^{[4]Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, “5G Base-Station Count 2024,” MIIT.GOV.CN}. Japan’s Smart Cities Consortium is incentivizing the deployment of millimeter-wave small cells across train stations and stadiums in preparation for the 2025 Osaka World Expo. India’s mandatory domestic-equipment preference bolsters local manufacturing, trimming radio-unit costs and shortening delivery cycles as governments pursue digitization to boost productivity, private-network tenders surge, deepening the 5G New Radio market opportunity among local integrators and hyperscalers.

Europe maintains moderate, policy-driven expansion. Pan-EU spectrum harmonization reduces the number of device variants and simplifies cross-border roaming for truck and rail operators. The Digital Decade fund underwrites fiber backhaul in less-dense regions, thereby catalyzing the development of neutral-host models. Meanwhile, European regulators are championing open-RAN to diversify supplier ecosystems, following security-based vendor restrictions. These initiatives sustain healthy though measured growth, balancing fiscal prudence with industrial competitiveness.