Although there are nearly 100 5G terminals, they are not even the tip of the iceberg.

The quantity, quality and speed of mobile terminals have always been important factors affecting the replacement of mobile communications. The lag of terminals will form a bottleneck for the new generation of mobile communications. The early issuance of 5G commercial licenses objectively puts forward the requirement for acceleration of the 5G terminal industry. Last week, the author hosted the "5G+ Intelligent Terminal Innovation and Development Forum" held in Chengdu. At the meeting, experts from all parties in the industry chain put forward many insights on 5G terminals and demonstrated the development results of 5G terminals. Judging from the current development situation, although the 5G terminal industry is developing rapidly, it is far from being "diversified". There is no experience to learn from the commercial development of the terminal ecosystem, and continuous exploration is needed.

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5G terminal speed is faster than the speed of terminal development in previous communication industry upgrades

Although 5G has just been launched, the publicity campaign has already begun. Now 5G has become a topic of conversation among ordinary people. Recently, Wu Jichuan, former Minister of Information Industry, mentioned that "5G is very hot now, hotter than 100℃ boiling water, and it will definitely burn your mouth if you drink it." However, publicity is publicity, and what people expect is the real visible and tangible 5G. The terminal is the carrier that allows ordinary people to truly experience 5G. Therefore, the launch of 5G terminals that can be used by ordinary people as soon as possible can turn the hot publicity into a real experience.

According to the latest data released by the Global Mobile Communications Suppliers Association (GSA), by the end of June this year, there were 96 5G terminals in the world and 39 5G terminal manufacturers. There are also 13 types of 5G terminals, not limited to smartphones, but also CPE, modules, hotspots, routers, adapters, robots, notebooks, USB terminals and other forms.

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It can be said that the development speed of 5G terminals is much faster than the development speed of terminals before and after the commercial use of 3G/4G. As early as October 2017, Qualcomm launched the first 5G baseband chip X50. More than three months after the first version of the 3GPP 5G standard was frozen, Huawei HiSilicon released its first 5G chip Balong 5G01 and the first 5G commercial terminal 5G CPE. Since then, with the further progress of the 5G standard, Huawei and Qualcomm successively released Balong 5000 and X55 commercial chips in early 2019. At present, there are commercial chips from five manufacturers on the market, including HiSilicon, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Unigroup Zhanrui, and Samsung. This situation has never occurred before and after the commercial use of 3G/4G.

Among the 96 5G terminals that have been launched, 5G terminals from Chinese manufacturers account for a relatively high proportion, including 4 5G CPEs, 2 mobile phones, 1 hotspot, and 1 module launched by Huawei, 1 self-developed mobile phone and 1 hotspot by China Mobile, 1 mobile phone and 1 notebook by Lenovo, 2 mobile phones from Oppo, 2 mobile phones from Nubia, 1 mobile phone from OnePlus, 5 modules from Quectel, 3 modules from Fibocom, 5 modules from SIMCom, 1 mobile phone and 1 USB terminal from TCL, 1 router, 1 drone, 1 robot, and 1 module each launched by Sunac and its partners, 3 mobile phones from Xiaomi, 3 mobile phones from Vivo, 3 CPEs, 1 mobile phone, 1 hotspot, 1 module, 1 router, and 1 switch from ZTE.

According to GSA statistics, the largest number of 5G commercial terminals that have been launched include:

• 25 mobile phones
• CPE 23 models
• 27 IoT modules
• Hot 7 models
• There are only 1-2 other types of products

It can be seen that the current 5G terminals are still mainly in the form of increasing data rates, and all terminals still serve the eMBB scenarios. Of course, this is closely related to the current 5G commercial network. Without a commercial network, there is no commercial terminal.

The maturity and popularization of driver terminals cannot be solved by the terminal alone.

With commercial networks, we need to increase the number of network connections and usage frequency. Driving the maturity and popularization of terminals is a key task to be done in the next step. Looking back at the maturity and popularization of terminals in the 3G/4G era, after the network infrastructure was built, terminals did become a major bottleneck for the development of the entire industry.

In the 3G era, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network standard disadvantages and the lack of terminals led to its lagging 3G development. However, China Unicom's introduction of the iPhone star terminal made it the fastest-growing operator in the 3G era. Later, China Telecom and China Mobile also cooperated with Apple to introduce star terminals.

To drive the maturity of the industry chain, terminal subsidies are a common method used by operators. In the 3G/4G era, operators spent hundreds of billions of yuan on terminal subsidies every year, which led to a drop in terminal prices. Can this method still be used in the 5G era?

According to public data, after the three major operators in South Korea commercialized 5G in early April, in just three months, the number of 5G users in South Korea exceeded 1.65 million. This rocket-like rise was largely dependent on subsidies. According to the example given by C114, a 5G mobile phone from LG was originally priced at 1.1 million won (about 6,400 yuan), but thanks to the strong subsidies from operators, the actual purchase price was almost free or even lost money. The existence of mobile phone subsidies not only distorts the perception of hardware value by a large number of users, but also distorts the actual cost of terminals, leading to different internal frictions between manufacturers and operators.

Domestic operators have not yet released 5G packages and marketing plans, but subsidies similar to South Korea's are not a sustainable means of development. The business model of mobile phone subsidies is relatively mature, but in addition to 5G mobile phones, a large number of 5G terminals in the future will be non-mobile phones. There is no precedent for how to form a closed-loop business model after subsidies for these new terminal forms.

Previously, in order to drive the development of the Internet of Things, operators had introduced a subsidy policy for Internet of Things modules, such as the subsidy for NB-IoT modules, which could reach up to 80%. However, in practice, such a large subsidy did not bring about an explosive growth of NB-IoT, because the development of NB-IoT related terminals involves multiple factors on both the supply and demand sides, which cannot be solved by a module subsidy.

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Therefore, the maturity and popularity of the 5G terminal industry need to be analyzed in detail. 80% of 5G networks serve the communication between things. 5G terminals must be considered and promoted together with the solutions, application scenarios, business pain points, etc. of the industry. These factors are combined like a wooden barrel. No factor can have a short board, otherwise it will directly become a bottleneck for application. For example, 5G-based AR headsets can provide ordinary workers in industrial maintenance scenarios with what they see is what they get guidance, but AR headsets alone are far from being able to achieve this. Data collection of factory equipment, digital-based modeling, digital twins and other solutions must also keep up to achieve application implementation. Therefore, the maturity and popularity of 5G terminals used in various industries are closely linked to the overall digitalization of an industry, which is not something that can be solved by subsidies in a short period of time.

The tip of the iceberg of 5G terminal form has not yet been opened

The data above also points out that although 96 5G terminals have been launched, the terminal forms are still very limited. The current 5G terminals are far from being "diverse". It can be said that they are not even the tip of the iceberg of 5G terminal forms, because the number of 5G terminal forms in the future may exceed our imagination.

We might as well take the existing wireless terminals as a reference. Among the current terminal forms, the largest scale is still the smartphone, but there are also many forms and numbers of wireless terminals other than mobile phones. They also use 2G/3G/4G/NB-IoT networks to serve the production and operation of various industries and people's lives.

According to statistics from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's Telecommunication Technology Terminal Laboratory, among the wireless smart terminals that have undergone network certification in the laboratory, there are also many non-mobile smart terminals, among which NB-IoT wireless data terminals and smart watches have the largest share. Since NB-IoT modules and smart watches have the characteristics of homogeneity and scale, they can form a large share, while other industry terminals are fragmented and may not be scalable.

Among all non-mobile terminals, industry-specific terminals are worthy of attention. The so-called industry-specific terminals refer to wireless data terminals that need to be used specifically in the production and operation processes of various industries. These terminals may not have as many functions as smartphones, but they are specially customized for industry needs and have been widely used in a large number of industries.

According to the statistics of the Telecommunication Terminal Laboratory, the number of special machines in the payment, medical and logistics industries is the largest. Mobile payment terminals such as mobile POS machines are indeed the most common special machines in various shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and various retail and financial scenarios; the handheld terminals used by express delivery staff are also a common special machine in the industry.

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These non-mobile wireless terminals may have new functions in the 5G era and be upgraded to new smart terminals. These forms will greatly increase the types of 5G terminals. In the future, the integration of all walks of life in the national economy with 5G and the application of the Internet of Things will surely give rise to more abundant 5G terminals.

Of course, more abundant 5G terminals will rely on more abundant network functions. In the early stage of 5G commercialization, 5G mainly supports eMBB scenarios, and the form of 5G terminals is relatively limited. With the implementation of standards and commercial networks that support uRLLC and mMTC scenarios, dedicated terminals and IoT terminals in various industries will emerge one after another. Under such circumstances, 5G terminals can be called "diversified".

5G empowers all industries, which means that there are a large number of different 5G terminals in all industries. Mobile phones are just one form of mobile smart terminals. In the past few years, the generational upgrade of mobile communications has led to a large number of innovations in mobile phones. It can be expected that the entry of 5G into terminals in various industries will also bring greater innovation space to terminals in various industries.