Recently, Qualcomm senior vice president Durga Prasad Malladi said in an interview with the media that some OEMs and operators are interested in accelerating the process of 5G commercialization. The first 5G handsets will be available by the end of 2018.
Malladi said that global operators are gradually improving the construction of 5G networks. The current network download speed is between 1Gbps and 4.5Gbps. It is expected that the initial speed of 5G will be 2Gbps or 4Gbps, which is 2 or 4 times that of existing 4G/LTE networks.
Qualcomm has previously announced that it plans to launch the world’s first 5G handset at CES next year, but at present, the demand of certain operators and manufacturers has led to the advancement of this plan. Malladi said that Qualcomm will To help manufacturers achieve this goal. Malladi also said that in addition to smart phones, Qualcomm will also plan to develop 5G technology to support the tablet and notebook.
Although Malladi did not specify the first batch of 5G mobile phone manufacturers, it is likely to come from the United States and China.
From the operator side, currently several major mainstream operators in the United States are more aggressive. For example, AT&T currently offers '5G Evolution' to provide users with experiences in multiple cities. Only users who use newer 4G mobile phones can enjoy all of these 4G upgrades. Welfare. Although this is not a true 5G technology, AT&T stated that it will provide the basis for 5G, while AT&T announced that it will provide true 5G-based commercial services by the end of 2018.
Verizon also announced that it will launch 5G fixed wireless broadband service in California before the end of 2018, and then deploy it for other markets. It is expected that the initial deployment of 5G fixed wireless broadband will cover about 30 million U.S. home users.
In order to face the future of 5G competition, the nation's third and fourth largest wireless operators T-Mobile and Sprint also formally announced the merger.
Chinese operators are currently actively conducting scale tests of 5G networks. The basic schedule is for commercial use in 2019 and commercial use in 2020.
In addition to the operator, Malladi also mentioned OEM manufacturers in the interview. Therefore, whether Chinese mobile phone manufacturers will launch 5G at the end of 2018 is also a concern.
According to reports, 19 equipment manufacturers and 18 operators worldwide plan to use the Qualcomm X50 baseband chip. Among them, in addition to the three major operators, they also include mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo. However, in reality, both Is the upcoming market Xiaomi, or the downturn of the OPPO, Vivo, there are ahead of the launch of 5G mobile phone power.
At the summit of Qualcomm in China in January this year, Xiaobin co-founder and CEO Lin Bin stated that Xiaomi hopes to be the first R&D and 5G handset manufacturer, and hopes that Qualcomm will support it.
OPPO and vivo also jointly demonstrated the 5G network jointly with Qualcomm recently. In light of the reality that the “Blue Green Brothers” are in urgent need of reversing the market's difficulties, the first to launch 5G mobile phones, both from the market and from the marketing level, will preempt the market. Send advantage.