Where is the future of 5G terminals?

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In the 5G era, in order to rapidly advance deployment, the industry has defined two networking modes: non-standalone networking NSA and standalone networking SA.

Among them, NSA is a transitional solution that relies on 4G base stations and core networks, while SA's core network is a new network architecture that can give full play to the capabilities of 5G. It can form greater economies of scale while providing high performance, and avoid the complex interoperability problems that may arise during integration with the LTE network. However, in the early commercialization stage, the SA approach is relatively costly.

In the past two years, the industry has actively promoted the evolution of 5G network construction from NAS to SA. At the 517 World Telecommunication Day Conference, Liu Liehong, member of the Party Leadership Group and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said: In order to accelerate the maturity of new consumer terminals based on 5G, from now on, new 5G terminals will enable 5G independent networking by default.

In addition, Minister Liu Liehong also shared the latest data on 5G base station construction, 5G patent claims, and 5G mobile phone terminals:

• In terms of 5G base station construction , as of the end of March, more than 819,000 5G base stations have been built, accounting for about 70% of the global proportion. At present, 5G networks have basically covered all cities at the prefecture level and above in the country, and independent networking modes have been deployed on a large scale. From the perspective of operators, China Mobile and China Broadcasting Corporation have opened more than 460,000 5G base stations, and China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared. As of the end of April, a total of 390,000 5G base stations have been opened. Due to 5G co-construction and sharing, the cost of 5G base station construction has been saved by more than 80 billion yuan.
• In terms of 5G standards , the number of 5G essential patent declarations accounts for more than 38%, an increase of nearly 5 percentage points since the first half of 2020, ranking first in the world. China has two of the world's five mainstream 5G system equipment manufacturers, with a global market share of more than 50%.
• In terms of 5G mobile terminals , the current number of user connections has reached 280 million, accounting for more than 80% of the world's total.

The 5G terminal ecosystem is flourishing, with new consumer terminals emerging one after another

As the key platform and control center of 5G applications, 5G terminals provide a physical basis for the integration of traditional terminal equipment with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. With the 5G industry upstream laying a solid foundation, breaking the situation of mobile terminals being the only one in the 4G era, 5G terminals have added robots, TVs, notebooks, 5G Pads, industrial CPEs, car routers/hotspots, car units, cameras, encoders, VR/AR glasses, and other 5G smart wearables in addition to traditional terminal types such as smartphones, indoor and outdoor CPEs, modules, hotspots, and adapters. Innovative personal terminal products are emerging in an endless stream.

According to data released by GSMA, as of April 2021, 162 operators in 68 countries and regions around the world have provided 5G commercial services, and there are 756 5G terminals, including 387 smartphones.

Proportion of various 5G terminals

As can be seen from the above figure, 5G mobile phones account for nearly half of 5G terminals, reaching 48.4%.

In addition to smartphones, fixed-access CPE has become the terminal with the largest 5G shipments. In 2021, personal terminal products will develop rapidly, the categories will continue to be enriched, and the market scale will further increase.

From the above figure, although the overall scale of 5G CPE is still small, it does exist. The domestic market is expected to sell 500,000 5G CPEs in 2021. At the same time, the industry terminal market has gradually increased in volume this year, the richness of terminals has continued to increase, and prices have further dropped. 5G CPE and gateways are expected to drop to around 1,000 yuan.

In addition, as 5G modules develop towards universalization and modularization, 5G pan-terminals will surely accelerate and develop comprehensively. It is worth mentioning that wearable devices with health monitoring functions and sports data analysis are becoming increasingly popular.

In the face of the rapid development of pan-5G terminals, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has stated that it will enhance application innovation capabilities and cultivate emerging consumption models such as 5G+augmented reality, 5G+virtual reality, and immersive games.

Promote the rapid development of 5G terminals, operators keep pace and the industry chain works together to seek common development

When talking about 5G construction, there are two key words: the number of base stations and the number of terminals. Someone made a metaphor for the two: if base station construction is regarded as road construction, then 5G terminals are the vehicles on this road.

It now seems that this road has been almost completed, but we are still not sure about the specific types of these so-called "vehicles". The industry still needs more investment and in-depth exploration. The next period of time will also be a golden period for the explosive development of new applications based on 5G.

As for the development of 5G ecology and terminal industry, operators undoubtedly play a leading role.

Some time ago, China Mobile announced its terminal strategy for 2021, preparing to jointly promote the popularization of 5G from three aspects: mobile phones, pan-terminals, and industry terminals. It also launched the first batch of 5G terminal capability kits to empower the terminal industry and accelerate the large-scale development of 5G.

It is reported that there are five capability kits, namely 5G terminal capability configuration middleware, 5G cloud terminal solution, 5G message middleware, 5G terminal slicing middleware, and 5G GSXR terminal solution.

China Unicom proposed the "Wild Goose Inside" concept based on the idea of ​​software hardware and hardware chipization. By packaging China Unicom's 5G+AIoT software and hardware capabilities, such as independent customized chips, modules, CMP/DMP core capabilities, national standard eSIM, AI, MEC, blockchain, etc., for 5G industry terminals, it provides a high-quality and efficient capability foundation for the large-scale construction and application of industry terminals.

In addition, China Unicom has also taken the lead in conducting research on 5G terminal scenario requirements and standard customization for key industry sectors, using "Yanfei Inside" to quickly complete the development of 5G industry terminals covering scenarios such as smart manufacturing, smart medical care, smart security, live media broadcasting, smart ports, and smart mines.

In terms of 5G terminals, China Telecom has proposed to adhere to the strategy of leading all categories of terminals and promote standard coordination and interconnected capability platforms.

At the same time, China Telecom will provide users with full-scenario smart terminals that support 5G dual-gigabit access. Full-scenario terminals include three aspects: network terminals, such as 5G mobile phones and CPE; business terminals, such as AR/VR all-in-one machines/split glasses game controllers, etc.; and industry terminals, such as Internet of Vehicles modules, drone modules, and smart factory components.

Of course, the 5G terminal industry chain is not just about operators, it involves upstream chips and downstream terminal manufacturers. With the joint efforts of the industry chain, 5G terminals are constantly maturing.

As far as 5G terminals are concerned, there are already many "players" on this track. However, what kind of "tickets" do they hold? What do they rely on to enter? What is the latest situation on this track? If you are also confused, you may want to find out here!