- Dell’Oro’s Dave Bolan thinks that a rumored 5G Apple smartwatch could be a tonic for 5G SA market
- The latest Dell’Oro report said that the mobile core market grew 19% annually and 31% in the 2nd quarter
- The firm said that 71 MNOs have now officially launched 5G SA networks
Forthcoming 5G smart watches are rumored to be one of the things that will help drive steady 5G standalone (5G SA) growth in the back-end of 2025 and into 2026, according to Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group.
“5G smartwatches will use [5G reduced capability] - which only works on 5G SA networks - and AT&T already announced they support RedCap devices covering about 200 million [of the] population. If this is true, Verizon cannot be far behind,” Bolan told Fierce in an email.
“It has not been announced when AT&T and Verizon will launch 5G SA for consumers on a nationwide basis,” the analyst said. “If the rumors are true that Apple will launch a 5G smartwatch in the fall or winter, that might be when AT&T launches 5G SA for consumers.”
Apple hasn’t confirmed a 5G smartwatch yet. It has, however, announced its annual hardware showcase, where many expect that the 5G smartwatch will be announced, as well as the latest iPhone 17 smartphone, for the 9th of September.
Dell’Oro Group said in its second quarter 2025 mobile core network (MCN) and edge report, that it predicted manufacturing revenues by 5G core vendors at a 31% year-over-year growth rate. At the same time, it estimated that 71 Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have commercially launched enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services to consumers.
Top mobile core vendors
The top vendors in the mobile core space worldwide are Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE.
“As an industry, we have been bemoaning the slow uptake of 5G SA networks by MNOs,” Bolan said in a statement. “After all, we are in the sixth year of the 5G SA era, and with over 700 MNOs in the world, it is surprising that more 5G SA networks have not launched.”
Because 5G-Advanced and probably even 6G networks will require a 5G standalone core to even operate, even if an operator is still running a 5G network on a non-standalone (NSA) now, they will need to update to 5G SA core by around 2030.
Fierce has already seen that AT&T and Verizon now have 5G SA networks in place, finally matching T-Mobile in the pure 5G world.
The Apple 5G smartwatch could be the one of consumers devices that will encourage users to upgrade to 5G SA.