Qualcomm Technologies and Chinese smartphone manufacturers namely Lenovo, OPPO , Vivo, Xiaomi , ZTE and Wingtech Technology have announced the “5G Pioneer” Initiative to work together to support China’s smartphone industry for the global opportunities that will be made available by 5G and introduce 5G New Radio (NR) standard-compliant commercial devices expected as early as 2019.
60% of Chinese consumers are likely to purchase 5G smartphones when available, according to findings of a recent Qualcomm survey. According to Counterpoint Research, in 2017, seven of the top ten global 3G/4G smartphone manufacturers were from China.
Through the 5G pioneer initiative, Qualcomm will provide the manufacturers its deep expertise in semiconductor solutions as well as a platform to develop premium tier and commercial 5G devices. The members of the initiative plan to work not just on 5G applications and experiences, but also technologies like IoT and AI.
“5G will bring massive new opportunities to the mobile industry, and we are excited to work with these manufacturers on this 5G Pioneer Initiative,” said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated.
Yuanqing Yang, chairman and chief executive officer, Lenovo said: “We hope to make our personal life and work smarter, and enable intelligent transformation across multiple industries through our concerted efforts.”
“Working on 5G Pioneer Initiative will help us to better innovate 5G mobile technologies, further expanding OPPO business worldwide on the existing basis and allowing more young people to have access to purchase OPPO smartphones,” added Andy Wu, vice president, OPPO.
Wei Shen, chief executive officer, vivo said: “vivo has embarked on studying 5G and potential new technologies of the next generation of smartphones since two years ago, and planned to conduct 5G pre-commercial device research and experiments in pace with 5G development, in an attempt to commercialise 5G smartphones as early as 2019.”
“For more broader opportunities that 5G will bring to Xiaomi, we will keep exploring and innovating on future technologies, insist on building high-quality smartphones for users worldwide, and deliver Xiaomi’s products to users in a broader range of regions,” Bin Lin, co-founder and president, Xiaomi said.
“ZTE established itself as a market leader in 5G research and development with the announcement at MWC 2017 of the world's first gigabit smartphone with download speeds up to 1 Gbps, and we are committed to being a leading supplier of 5G commercial devices and solutions, with plans to launch in 2019, ” said Lixin Cheng, CEO, ZTE Mobile Devices.
Xuezheng Zhang, chairman, Wingtech said: “Wingtech will also build 5G Always Connected PCs in addition to 5G Premium Tier Smartphones, as 5G will make Always Connected PC the global standard.”