One year after the issuance of 5G licenses, how much progress have we made

Let's turn the clock back to June 6, 2019. On this day, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Broadcasting Corporation. This marked a landmark event in the development of global 5G and the official start of China's 5G era.

One year later, 5G, as a proprietary technology term, was written into the government work report for the fourth consecutive year and was defined as an important basic technology leading the "new infrastructure". Now, the new generation of digital technology represented by 5G has become one of the important choices to alleviate the impact of the epidemic, drive economic growth, and accelerate the digital transformation and upgrading of industries. In the foreseeable future, 5G will continue to play a supporting role in expanding connectivity, supporting digital transformation of infrastructure, and improving people's quality of life.

Network: More than 10,000 new base stations added every week

At present, 5G has become the fastest-deployed generation of cellular network technology in history. In just the second year of commercial use, 5G network construction is already in full swing: data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that as of the end of March, China has built 198,000 5G base stations, and now about 10,000 5G base stations are added every week. Globally, more than 60 operators have deployed 5G commercial networks, and it is expected that by 2023, the number of global 5G connections will exceed 1 billion, which is 2 years faster than the speed at which 4G has achieved the same number of connections. In 2025, the number of 5G connections is expected to reach nearly 3 billion, accounting for 30% of the total number of connections in the world.

According to the 5G Economy report, by 2035, 5G will generate $13.2 trillion in economic output and 22.3 million jobs, which is 3.4 times the number of jobs currently supported by the same level of economic output. The industry expects that in the next decade, 5G will surpass the impact of electricity and the Internet, become a catalyst for promoting mobile technology to become a general technology, promote efficient coordination among various production factors, and release a "multiplier effect" for sustainable social development.

Regarding the booming development of 5G around the world, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said: "5G means a more advanced network. It will bring more than just a new round of phone replacement. 5G will transform all important industries. 5G will become the biggest development opportunity for the entire wireless communications industry and will bring new growth opportunities and lead an innovation revolution to the global economy in the coming decades."

Mobile phones: 44.21 million units shipped in China

With the rapid development of the Internet, consumers want to experience the most intuitive changes and the most direct "tool" that 5G brings to their lives, which is the mobile phone. One year after the commercial use of 5G, China's 5G terminal industry has also delivered a very impressive report card. From last year to April this year, a total of 44.21 million 5G smartphones were shipped in China, and 96 5G mobile phone terminals obtained network access licenses, while at the end of December last year, the number was only 39, and a considerable number of them came from Qualcomm's partners.

In the past three months, more than a dozen mobile phone manufacturers and brands have successively released 5G flagship smartphones equipped with Snapdragon 865 and 5G smartphones for the mid-to-high-end market equipped with Snapdragon 765G, which has greatly increased the market popularity of 5G terminals and brought consumers a rich selection of 5G mobile phones. At the same time, through close cooperation with Qualcomm, many Chinese manufacturers have also seized the 5G opportunity and took the lead in releasing 5G smartphones in many countries and regions overseas, truly realizing the "5G leadership" in "mobile phone exports".

Chinese manufacturers have released more than a dozen 5G smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform

At present, with the continuous enrichment of Snapdragon 5G solutions, the Snapdragon mobile platform has become a leading platform for accelerating the large-scale commercial use of 5G worldwide. So far, more than 375 5G terminals using Snapdragon 5G solutions have been released or are being designed, including smartphones, 5G modules, mobile hotspots, CPE, 5G PCs, etc.

Qualcomm has always been aiming to promote the popularization of 5G at more levels and for more types of terminals. This is based on Qualcomm's long-term investment in technology research and development and its leading and rich 5G solutions. Qualcomm's second-generation modem and RF system, Snapdragon X55, won the "Most Innovative Device Award" in the 2020 GLOMO Global Mobile Awards issued by GSMA in February this year for its disruptive innovation for terminals. Based on the successful 5G solutions of the first two generations, Qualcomm also released the third-generation 5G modem and RF system, Snapdragon X60, at the beginning of this year. It uses the world's first 5nm 5G baseband and is the world's first 5G modem and RF system that supports the aggregation of all major frequency bands and their combinations, aiming to create a global 5G performance benchmark.

Expansion: Continuously enriching 5G applications

A global pandemic has made people more deeply aware of the importance of high-speed, reliable, and universal communication networks in responding to crises, ensuring industrial development, and people's lives. Consumers' perception of the demand for personal and home networks no longer feels distant for network-enabled application scenarios such as remote collaborative office, remote medical diagnosis, and remote education. In addition to smartphones, the application of 5G is constantly expanding, which will greatly improve productivity and change people's lifestyles.

Qualcomm has always believed that the development of 5G is inseparable from the sincere cooperation of the industry chain. Therefore, in the process of global 5G development and deployment, Qualcomm has always adhered to the horizontal business model and cooperated with many companies upstream and downstream of the ecosystem, including operators, terminal manufacturers, application developers, etc., to provide a foundation for their innovation and explore 5G opportunities with a wider range of partners.

Taking XR as an example, mobile technology enables people to access XR content anytime and anywhere, while 5G further promotes the experience improvement and large-scale expansion of XR. Snapdragon XR2 and its reference design are the world's first extended reality platform and XR reference design that support 5G. On May 26, Qualcomm announced that it will work with a number of global operators, smartphone manufacturers and XR Viewer manufacturers including China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom to deliver XR Viewer products to consumers and enterprise users within the next year, providing an unprecedented immersive experience through 5G technology. The lightweight XR Viewer head-mounted display device can be connected to a 5G smartphone to bring users a new generation of immersive experience.

In addition, driven by 5G, mobile PCs will redefine productivity. In February 2019, Qualcomm launched the world's first PC platform to achieve 5G connectivity, the Snapdragon 8cx, to transform the top mobile PC experience. In December 2019, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 8c and 7c computing platforms for mainstream and entry-level mobile PCs to create a complete Snapdragon mobile platform product portfolio. 5G PCs built by partners based on the Snapdragon 8cx platform are also available.

Of course, 5G will also bring about earth-shaking changes to industry, especially manufacturing. According to the IHS Markit report, by 2035, manufacturing-related use cases will account for 36% of the total economic output of 5G. Last year, Qualcomm, together with industrial manufacturing companies such as Bosch and Siemens, evaluated and demonstrated the construction and application of 5G networks in industrial environments. In particular, the first 5G SA enterprise private network demonstration achieved in cooperation with Siemens was considered by the industry to be an important milestone in the expansion of 5G into the field of industrial automation. In the future, with the continuous evolution of global 5G standards, 5G's ultra-reliable low-latency control and optimization will support new types of services and fully empower the industrial Internet of Things; at the same time, discussions on 3GPP Release 17 are also underway.

The wind is strong and the sails are full. Qualcomm is currently working with all members of 3GPP to continue to advance the evolution of 5G standards; at the same time, Qualcomm will continue to expand the 5G ecosystem, work closely with operators, terminal manufacturers, application developers, etc., and fully support the deployment and evolution of the "new infrastructure" led by 5G, so that the "new infrastructure" can benefit more people, more industries and more cities.