Mobile industry players must position now to win 5G race

USA: Strategy Analytics says now is the time for industry players to position to win the 5G race.

The Strategy Analytics Wireless Networks & Platforms (WNP) service report, "Is the 5G Race Beginning?," recommends that companies start now with their strategies to influence the definition of the requirements for the new generation systems and to ensure that R&D spend translates into strong 5G patent positions.

Momentum is building as leading companies engage in the first round of 5G technology development. Samsung is the latest industry player to have announced its 5G demonstration. The traditional technical leaders in the radio transmission technology area, Ericsson and NTT DoCoMo, also revealed their progress in 5G research. Chinese industry players even formed an industrial group to promote the research and development of 5G technology.

"The official process of 5G standardization should be launched in 2015-2016 time frame, to be kicked off at ITU-R WRC-15. So all current '5G' activities are only a warm-up before the official process," noted Guang Yang, senior analyst for Wireless Networks & Platforms.

"But these warm-up activities are important for the industry to build technical consensus and to prepare the ecosystem. It is also a key period for the technology giants in the industry to predict the core components of the future system and to secure related patents."

"The next two years will see significant movement between industry players as the building blocks of 5G are researched and defined," added Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, director, Wireless Networks & Platforms. "Big EU companies and East Asian players (China, Japan and Korea) are already developing their 5G visions. It will be interesting to see what strategies emerge from North America. In particular, the plans of Qualcomm and Intel, the two chipset giants, should be closely watched."

Improved data transmission rates are still a focus of the next generation 5G system, just as faster data was a focus for today's 4G LTE. Other requirements for 5G that are beginning to emerge in industrial and academic research include support for a higher number of connected devices, longer battery life, and reduced End-to-End latency, among others.