While 5G networks are still pretty hard to access in many major smartphone markets around the world, not to mention largely useless due to their modest or outright non-existent speed gains over 4G connectivity available in a lot of places stateside, China’s incredible progress in that field might just be enough to boost the fledgling industry to a fairly remarkable number by the end of the year.
We’re talking 250 million 5G-enabled handsets forecasted to be globally shipped in 2020 by Digitimes Research, of which China alone is expected to account for a whopping 170 million units, representing almost 70 percent of the overall pie. That’s a huge slice for the world’s most populous country, virtually guaranteeing Huawei’s global dominance of this very important market segment after Samsung narrowly took the win for the year’s first three months.
Although the latest Digitimes report doesn’t name any names of companies predicted to benefit from this rapid surge of 5G smartphone shipments, Apple is likely to join Huawei and other “Chinese handset vendors” increasingly focused on the entry-level and mid-tier divisions in winning big. Meanwhile, Samsung could have trouble regaining its lead over the smartphone market as a whole due to the brand’s Chinese irrelevance and the massive anticipated success of the iPhone 12 lineup.
In case you’re wondering, there were roughly 24 million 5G-capable smartphones shipped worldwide between January and March 2020, which means the April – December period will account for more than 225 million unit shipments if this forecast pans out.
That’s some truly amazing progress we can only attribute to the launch of a new hero device (or four) with major global recognition, as well as the overall trend of diminishing prices noticed from China to the US. All in all, the aforementioned 250 million tally is expected to be enough for more than 20 percent of the world’s smartphone shipments, which unfortunately means the latter number will likely fall by over 15 percent compared to the same figure recorded in 2019.
The root cause of that huge decline is obviously no big secret, as is the fact that China has pulled off a significantly faster recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak than the rest of the world. Believe it or not, more than one in two smartphones shipped around those parts in 2020 will come with 5G support, compared to the under 10 percent share predicted for 5G-enabled mobile devices outside Huawei’s homeland.
