Massive MIMO will consolidate its position in 5G RAN and increase its rate of growth in all markets, with total units installed per year rising just over 3x – from 930,000 in 2023 to 3.07 million in 2031. By then, the cumulative number of mMIMO units deployed globally will be around 22 million.
Deployments will be more concentrated in denser urban areas, which will also account for most of the large arrays that achieve the highest gains in capacity and performance. While numbers vary greatly between regions, these reflect the 5G field generally and our forecast projects very similar rates of growth across all regions, with Latin America experiencing slightly the highest rate.
China dominates the numbers, with a projected 1.12 million mMIMO units installed by 2031, with the USA then second at just over 400,000 and India third on 262,000. India began its 5G roll out late, starting only after its first 5G spectrum auction concluding in August 2022, but has since made up for lost time, to notch up over 100 million 5G users within a year before the end of 2023.
The picture is similar for mMIMO costs, with far smaller regional differences in price for mMIMO equipment compared with the revenues generated by the services. The annual spending on mMIMO equipment deployed worldwide will rise from $47.7 billion in 2023 to $151.4 billion for 2031. Here, costs comprise equipment, installation, and support.
For each country and region analyzed, as well as globally, the forecast is subdivided by basic mMIMO array size, taking the five categories: 16T-16R, 32T-32R, 64T-64R, 128T-128R, and 256T-256R. Of these, 16T-16R is currently the most widely deployed, accounting for 441,800 deployments in 2023, or 47.4% of the 930,200 total. But 32T-32R is taking over as the leading type this year and by 2031 will take 57.1% of the mMIMO units sold – some 1.71 million out of the 3.07 million.
The situation for mMIMO costs is slightly different because the bigger units are more expensive and therefore count for more of that total than they do for numbers of units, but 32T-32R will still be dominant throughout the forecast period.
This is the latest forecast in the RAN Research Archive, which now includes:
- mMIMO – Market Forecast
- 5G RedCap – Market Forecast
- Network Slicing – Market Forecast
- Small Cell Densification – Market Forecast
- Open RAN Equipment – Market Forecast
- Fixed Wireless Access – Market Forecast
- Energy Use of Video and Mobile Networks – Market Forecast
- Connected Cars – Market Forecast
- 5G Network Slicing – Market Forecast
- RAN Automation – Market Forecast
- Private 5G Networks and WiFi – Market Forecast
- Small Cells and Network Edge – Market Forecast
- Open RAN & Macro RAN – Market Forecast
- 4G Deployments as 5G Backbone – Market Forecast
- vRAN and Open RAN Migration – Market Forecast
- 5G Core Migration – Market Forecast
Rethink Technology Research is an analyst firm that has established itself over its 21-year history as a thought leader in 5G, and all forms of wireless; the entertainment ecosystem and streaming media; the Internet of Things; and has now embarked on the energy marketplace. RAN Research is our wireless research team, producing market forecasts and technology white papers.
