As the saying goes, no tree can make a forest. 5G is a huge system engineering. From research and development, standardization, engineering design, product launch to commercial implementation, it integrates the efforts of many practitioners in the industry. For the 5G development of the digital and intelligent society, it is particularly important to create an open, cooperative and win-win industrial ecology. And you have me, and I have you in the industrial ecology, which has played an active role and made great contributions in the formulation and evolution of 5G standards, accelerating terminal development, and enabling the industry.

Working together to promote the continuous evolution of standards

First look at the standard.

At present, the entire network construction is based on the first version of the international standard - 5G basic standard R15, which meets the enhanced mobile broadband scenario (eMBB) in the three major application scenarios of 5G, and achieves faster network transmission rate, mainly for ToC The market provides the overall architecture for the subsequent 5G development. R15 is the cornerstone of the future evolution of 5G.

R16 focuses on perfect low-latency and high-reliability capabilities. R16 also introduced NR V2X for the first time, and introduced 5G NR-based direct communication for C-V2X​. These new functions are all in R16 to promote the expansion of 5G to vertical industries key technologies. At the 88th meeting of the 3GPP TSG in July 2020, the 5G R16 standard was announced to be frozen, marking the official completion of the first evolution of 5G.

R17 is mainly aimed at IoT scenarios with medium and high speed connections. In terms of spectrum, one of the expansion features supported by R17 is to expand the millimeter wave frequency band from 52.6GHz to 71GHz; at the same time, R17 also introduces "NR-Light" (i.e. RedCap), non-terrestrial IoT terminals for lower complexity IoT terminals. Communications (NTN), or satellite communications​, also supports enhanced IIoT, positioning and V2X, as well as enhanced integrated access and backhaul (IAB) and RF repeaters.

R18 opens the second stage of 5G, namely 5G-Advanced. R18 will bring all-round capability improvement: First, the broadband will continue to be enhanced to better support new services represented by XR, higher spectrum efficiency, and better network coverage. , the terminal is more energy-efficient; the second is vertical industry support, strengthening integrated applications, more vertical industry-specific types of terminals, and enhancement of vertical industry-specific scenarios (such as uplink capability enhancement, positioning enhancement, etc.); third, artificial intelligence integration, development of new resources The fourth is the integration of communication perception to stimulate the new potential of 5G.

On June 9, 2022, at the 96th 3GPP RAN meeting held in Budapest, Hungary, the 5G R17 standard was announced to be frozen, marking the official completion of the 5G second evolution (third version) standard. This not only means the successful conclusion of the first stage of 5G technology evolution, but also proves the strong resilience of the mobile "ecosystem", providing a broader development space for 5G industry applications.

In supporting the formulation and evolution of 5G standards, the world's leading operators, Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, Nokia Bell, Qualcomm, etc., have made extraordinary contributions.

For example, operators are leading the industry in the evolution of 5G standards. On June 6, 2022, China Mobile and industry partners jointly released the world's first 5G-Advanced end-to-end industry models and the "5G-Advanced New Capabilities and Industry Development White Paper", marking the deep integration of the 5G-Advanced innovation chain and industry chain , to advance 5G-Advanced into a new stage of industrial construction; on May 15, 2022, China Unicom released three series of 5G-Advanced smart series of technological innovations and practical results.

In addition, Qualcomm, which has invested and accumulated technology for more than 30 years in the mobile communication industry, has participated in the whole process from 2G, 3G​, 4G to 5G, and cooperated with the industrial ecology to help the formulation of R15, R16, and R17 standards. And the evolution of the future R18, continue to promote the development of 5G, and work with partners to promote the continuous development of global wireless technology.

In terms of equipment vendors, for example, Ericsson, which has a history of 146 years, has been deeply involved in the whole process of mobile communication network construction from 1G to 5G. In the 5G era, it has made important contributions to the establishment of a globally unified 5G standard.

The popularity of 5G mobile phones is accelerating, and chip support is indispensable

In the early stage of 5G commercialization, as the smart terminal form closest to consumers, 5G mobile phones have become the pioneers of 5G commercialization. Compared with the 4G era, the development and maturity of 5G mobile phones is faster.

According to the latest report released by market research firm Counterpoint Research, smartphones using 5G technology have accounted for 51% of global smartphone sales.

In China, the styles of 5G mobile phones have increased significantly, the experience has been continuously improved, and the prices have continued to drop, which has accelerated the popularization of 5G mobile phones. According to the latest report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in May 2022, the Chinese market shipped 20.805 million mobile phones, including 17.739 million 5G mobile phones, a year-on-year increase of 6.0%, accounting for 85.3% of the mobile phone shipments in the same period.

As the core components of mobile phones, the rapid maturity of chips has become a key driving force for the popularization of 5G mobile phones, and it is also a prominent manifestation of the open cooperation of 5G industry ecology. In the 5G era, the terminal chip market has been reshuffled again. There are only three mainstream players in third-party chip suppliers: Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Ziguang Zhanrui, as well as a few mobile phone companies with self-developed chip capabilities such as Samsung and Apple.

The market research firm Strategy Analytics research report "2021 Q4 Baseband Market Share Tracking: Qualcomm and MediaTek jointly seize 95% of the 5G market share" pointed out that the global mobile phone baseband processor market revenue in 2021 will increase by 19.5% year-on-year, reaching 31.4 billion US dollars; Among them, 5G baseband revenue increased by 71% year-on-year, accounting for 66% of the total baseband revenue in 2021. Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung LSI, UNISOC and Intel occupy the top five baseband chip market revenue shares in 2021, with Qualcomm leading the baseband chip market with a 56% revenue share, followed by MediaTek (28%) and Samsung LSI (7%). %).

Industry applications are fruitful, and all parties in the ecosystem work together to accelerate in-depth integration

If the ToC market is the basic disk of 5G applications, accelerating the digital transformation of vertical industries and boosting the development of the digital economy is the real goal of 5G. Ericsson predicts that by 2030, the economic revenue of the global digital transformation brought about by 5G will reach 1.5 trillion US dollars.

According to the calculation of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology: It is expected that 5G will drive China's digital economy to grow by 15.2 trillion yuan from 2020 to 2025. The integration of 5G with artificial intelligence, big data and other ICT new technologies will promote the production organization and resources of the digital economy. The configuration efficiency and management service model have undergone profound changes.

Taking the Chinese market as an example, with the cooperation of all parties in the industrial ecology, the tentacles of 5G are being extended to more industries. In July 2021, in the "5G Application "Sailing" Action Plan (2021-2023) jointly issued by ten departments, it is clear that integration and application deepening actions should be carried out in many sub-sectors. Public data shows that 5G is exerting an enabling effect in many industries such as industry, medical care, education, and transportation in my country, forming a number of typical application scenarios with commercial value, covering 40 of the 97 categories of the national economy, and deploying 5G There are more than 5,325 industry virtual private networks, and the development of 5G industry applications has entered the "fast lane", and applications in the leading fields have begun to replicate on a large scale.

It should be pointed out that, first of all, in the digital economy era, the digitization of thousands of industries requires high-performance network connections as the foundation; The computing power of the side and the terminal puts forward higher requirements; in addition, the 5G industry application involves all aspects and often requires cross-industry collaboration to complete.

Therefore, the development of 5G applications has put forward higher requirements for open cooperation on the upstream and downstream of the industrial ecology. All parties need to work together to accelerate the deep integration of IT, CT and OT, open up all links in the industrial chain, and jointly build a good industrial ecology. Multi-technology and products at the intersection of everything connected, enterprise digital transformation and key industry trends, win-win cooperation. With deep accumulation and technical expertise in the fields of connectivity, high-performance, low-power computing, terminal-side AI, etc., Qualcomm has created a unified technology roadmap, bringing technological advantages such as AI, imaging, graphics processing and connectivity to almost all types of The connected terminals not only provide the industry with multi-generation 5G solutions covering a variety of terminal types, but also work closely with many Chinese enterprises to establish a 5G ecosystem through the "5G Pilot Program", "5G IoT Innovation Program", and the establishment of 5G ecosystem venture capital. Fund and other important measures, continue to accelerate the 5G commercial process, application landing and ecological innovation.

Facing the future, I hope that the industry will continue to use 5G and other innovative technologies as the cloud ladder to create an open innovation ecosystem and accelerate the realization of the beautiful vision of a digital and intelligent society.