According to Mobile Worldlive, market research company DellOro Group has raised its forecast for the whole year after overall mobile core network revenue increased by 32% over the same period last year. The company said the figure in China rose 122%, while the rest of the world rose 12%.
Dave Bolan, research director of Dell'Oro Group, said that some of the "big projects" in China that were completed in the first quarter of 2025, were mostly beneficial for ZTE.
ZTE is a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturing group headquartered in China.
Other domestic drivers are the transition from virtual network function to cloud goc network function "and the movement of subscribers from 4G to 5G mobile phones".
Data released by three major network operators in China shows that the total number of 5G network subscribers will reach 1.05 billion by the end of March 2025, an increase of 18.6%.
Bolan believes that other regions may rank higher throughout the remainder of 2025, emphasizing Orange's plans to launch SA 5G in France and Bharti Airtel in India.
According to him, these moves are expected to boost annual mobile core network revenue by 15% this year.
IMS Core (a high-quality voice system for 4G/5G networks) is also starting to show continued growth as more and more 3G networks are down, Bolan said.
The analyst expects upgrading the root network function on the cloud platform to boost IMS Core revenue by 5% annually.
