Statista, one of the leading providers of market and consumer data, stated that, 5G, the next evolution of wireless networks, has already arrived and is expected to take off this year.

While Samsung and several other smartphone makers released their first 5G handsets in 2019, Apple jumped on the 5G bandwagen in the fall of 2020, bringing the new standard to the entire iPhone 12 product line.

Having sold more smartphones in the last three months of 2020 than any company ever before in a single quarter, Apple's 5G debut provided a major boost to the new technology.

According to estimates from Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report, the number of 5G smartphone subscriptions worldwide will rise to 600 million by the end of this year, almost tripling from the 2020 total. By 2022, 5G subscriptions will become the de-facto standard, surpassing the one-billion mark according to Ericsson's estimates.

Moreover, talking about who leads the global race for 5G, one way of answering this question is to analyze the number of 5G patents owned by different companies. Holding more than 15% of granted and active patents worldwide, Chinese manufacturer Huawei takes first place in a ranking complied by IPlytics.

As the patenting process can take several years, these percentages might still change as more patents are granted. While Huawei also launched the most application overall, U.S. company Qualcomm comes second when counting granted and open applications.

Manufacturers from South Korea, a country where 5G was implemented faster than almost anywhere else, find themselves towards the top of the list, as does one more Chinese provider, ZTE. Feature phone era companies Ericsson and Nokia are also making strides in 5G technology.

More information at: https://www.statista.com/