5G Ecosystem – January 2021 – Executive Summary
Key facts
The number of announced 5G devices grew rapidly in 2020, accompanied by a corresponding rise in the number of commercially available 5G devices. By the end of the year, 559 5G devices had been announced, of which almost 60% were understood to be commercially available. This is an increase of 25.9% in the number of announced 5G devices in the last quarter, while the number of commercially available 5G devices has now reached 335, representing an increase of 50.9% in the last three months.
By end-December 2020, GSA had identified:
- twenty announced form factors.
- one hundred and eight vendors who had announced available or forthcoming 5G devices.
- five hundred and fifty-nine announced devices (including regional variants, and phones that can be upgraded using a separate adapter, but excluding operator-branded devices that are essentially rebadged versions of other phones), including 335 that are understood to be commercially available:
- two hundred and seventy-eight phones (up 27 from October), at least 233 of which are now commercially available (up 28 in a month). (Includes three phones that are upgraded to offer 5G using an adapter.)
- one hundred and eight FWA CPE devices (indoor and outdoor, including two Verizon-spec compliant devices not meeting 3GPP 5G standards), at least 35 of which are commercially available.
- seventy-two modules, at least 25 of which are commercially available.
- twenty-nine industrial/enterprise routers/gateway/modem, at least 11 of which are commercially available (figure restated from last issue).
- twenty-six hotspots (including regional variants), at least 16 of which are commercially available.
- nine laptops (notebooks), at least one of which is commercially available.
- eight tablets, at least six of which are commercially available.
- twenty-nine other devices (including drones, head-mounted displays, including in vehicle routers/modems/hotspots, robots, snap-on dongles/adapters, a switch, TVs, USB terminals/dongles/modems, cameras, a vehicle OBU, a vending machine and an encoder).
Not all devices are available immediately and specification details remain limited for some devices.
Figure 1: Growth of announced 5G devices (announced and commercially available)
5G Ecosystem – January 2021 – Executive Summary
©GSA 2021
