Nearly 75 thousand 5G testers were sold in 2018. According to a recent intelligence report presented by Future Market Insights, the sales volume of 5G tester will thrive impressively at around 14% in 2019. The report further estimates the 5G tester market valuation to exceed US$ 629 million in 2019, witnessing a bullish 14.6% increase over the value attained in 2018. FMI’s analysis envisages more than 40% of the total demand from telecom providers. Demand growth of 5G testers is likely to gain more prominence in the automotive industry over the course of next few years.
In line with businesses seeking networks delivering faster connectivity at lower latency, telecommunication service providers, mobile device companies, and network equipment manufacturers are prioritizing 5G adoption. Complementing the increasing priority of businesses for data transmission over private networks, global industrial giants are accelerating their move towards owning private 5G networks. While Audi is pioneering the trend of private 5G network ownership in collaboration with Ericsson, Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen are most likely to follow the trend, thereby fueling demand for 5G testers in the years to come.
Companies such as Verizon, AT&T, and others, are rapidly switching to 5G networks, which continues to raise demand for 5G testers. Network analyzers and signal analyzers remain the most sought after types of 5G testers in market, as indicated by the report. Network analyzers alone account for over 45% share in the 5G tester sales volume, whereas signal generators will witness healthy growth in sales in the years to come. Oscilloscopes have been positioned as highly lucrative in 5G tester market.
Rapid Upsurge in 5G Trials to Propel 5G Tester Sales
The number of trials for effective 5G implementation has been on a constant rise in the recent past, particularly in the US, South Korea, Japan, the UK, and a few other countries. The report cites 5G trials as the key booster to demand growth of 5G tester in the global market. Developed regional markets will however showcase greater potential for 5G tester market growth owing to high capital investment associated with adoption of 5G testers. Vodafone UK has already announced to have completed the 5G spectrum test trials across their existing network.
The West of England Combined Authority recently hosted an event as a part of the 5G Smart Tourism Project. The project has been launched in partnership with 25 partners, which also include Aardman, BBC, and Bristol City Council among others. This and more such projects underway are projected to create a favorable growth scenario for the 5G tester market in years to come. More recently, Bristol’s M Shed Museum also hosted a set of trials of new 5G technology enabled applications. While these trials are eventually intended to create enhanced visitor experience, 5G tester market will witness a heap of opportunities arising from such initiatives in the near future.
5G Test Manufacturers Facing a Host of Challenges
FMI’s report has profiled some of the most prominent players operating in 5G tester market, including Keysight Technologies, Anritsu, VIAVI Solutions Inc., Spirent Communications, LitePoint, and Rohde & Schwarz among others. In tandem with 5G introduction, manufacturers of 5G tester are eyeing the emerging opportunities to develop end use-specific equipment.
5G technology implementation is in sight over the next few years. However, telecom industry veterans opine that the 5G technology evolution will bring along a set of accompanying challenges related to measurement and test in terms of design, validation, and manufacturing. This according to the report will be the key demand determinant for 5G tester.
Moreover, the focus of 5G technology developers on mmWave for mobile access is most likely to introduce a new set of testing challenges in the market, which prompts at growing necessitation of a new testing infrastructure in the near future. This will extend strong support to the growth of 5G tester market, according to FMI’s analysis. With several network operators rolling out implementation of early 5G trials for their networks, the industry behemoth Rohde & Schwarz has launched the first-ever commercially available effective solution to network measurement – 5G NR (New Radio).
