5G mobile core network revenue growth is moving outside China, with Dell9Oro Group reporting a sharp regional split in 1Q26: growth in North America and EMEA while China fell faster than in any quarter since 5G launched.
Dell9Oro expects that divergence to continue through 2026, and attributes the outside-China acceleration largely to cloud-native modernization tied to 5G standalone.
North America and EMEA record 20% year-on-year MCN growth in 1Q26
Dell9Oro said worldwide 5G MCN revenue trends diverged sharply in the first quarter of 2026, with growth outside China offset by a steep decline in the Chinese market. It reported that 5G MCN revenue in North America and EMEA expanded by 20% year over year during the quarter, continuing momentum that began in 2025 into 1Q26.
At the same time, Dell9Oro said revenue in China declined more sharply than in any quarter since the introduction of 5G.
Sin Morgan links China9s slide to spending expectations and earlier 5G SA investment
Sin Morgan, research director at Dell9Oro Group, stated that 5G core network revenue growth that started in 2025 continued into the first quarter of 2026, with revenue from North America and EMEA expanding by 20%. Morgan also said telecom spending in China is expected to decline significantly in 2026.
Morgan added that operators in China have already invested considerably in 5G standalone (5G SA), and that China was an early adopter of 5G SA. Dell9Oro also said 5G MCN spending from China peaked in 1Q25.
Cloud-native architecture and microservices push 5G SA upgrades outside China
Dell9Oro said the acceleration of 5G SA deployments outside China is being driven largely by operator modernization efforts tied to cloud-native architectures. Morgan said the biggest driver of 5G SA upgrades is operators9 recognition that the industry is moving toward a cloud-native architecture and that VNFs will, fairly soon, no longer be supported.
Morgan said this is pushing more operators to undertake core network modernization, moving as much of the network as possible to a micro-services based architecture and profiting from operational gains enabled by cloud-native.
Monetization pressure and edge market momentum alongside legacy core upgrades
Morgan said operators are beginning to explore monetization opportunities tied to advanced 5G capabilities, though expectations remain only partially fulfilled. Morgan said operators are finding ways to monetize 5G SA networks with functionality such as slicing, RedCap, and advanced carrier aggregation, but there is a general sense that monetization opportunities have not yet fulfilled industry expectations.
Dell9Oro also said the multi-access edge computing (MEC) market continued growing during the quarter, with China remaining the dominant region for MEC deployments. It further said 4G packet core revenue outpaced overall market growth, reflecting continued operator investment in legacy network modernization.