Huawei is arguably the most innovative company in the world this year
According to incoPat, both China and the U.S. led the way with each making up 32% of the patents filed from January through October. Japan was next with 15% followed by the 7% submitted by South Korea. IncoPat says that the information it uses comes from patent filings available to the public in the field of wireless communications. This includes patents filed to protect inventions related to 5G technology. The report issued by incoPat notes “As a key area of modern communications, wireless communication network technology has always been a very important part in the 5G research and development process. With the new technological competition and new globalisation situation, wireless communication network technology is becoming an important strategic choice for enterprises to face international competition.”
Huawei is also the leader in helping the 3GPP develop standards for 5G. 3GPP (the 3rd Generation Partnership Project) is a term that covers standards organizations that help create protocols for mobile telecom. After Huawei, Ericsson and Qualcomm provide the most contributions to 3GPP for 5G standards. According to SCMP, this year 3GPP completed its next set of standards for 5G which include possible applications for 5G such as autonomous driving, smart factories, and remote surgery.
Earlier this month, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said that the country has built nearly 700,000 base stations in 2020 topping its original target of 500,000 for the whole year. As the world’s leading provider of networking equipment, Huawei is also an important supplier of 5G base stations. In fact, published reports indicate that Huawei will replace Ericsson this year to become number one in 5G base stations. Ericsson is expected to see its market share decline from 30% last year to 26.5% in 2020. Huawei, on the other hand, should see its 5G base station share rise from 27.5% last year to a leading 28.5% in 2020. That is, along as it can find enough 5nm Kirin 9000 chipsets to power these base stations. As we mentioned earlier in this article, the U.S. is preventing Huawei from receiving cutting-edge chips from TSMC.
