Time for 5G to Drive Growth in Smartphone Sector

The mobile phone industry is definitely up there when classifying sectors that have seen exponential growth over the recent years. As the world has been talking of and going through digital transformation – the mobile phone industry has been among the biggest harvesters in all this.

In fact, according to the GSMA mobile economy report for 2022, the industry is set to even grow more in the future. The GSMA report projects that there will be nearly 400 million new mobile subscribers by 2025. The majority will come from frontier markets in Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa which have been tipped to grow by the biggest margins in the recent future.

However, an important development that will see the industry grow more in the coming days is 5G connection. The technology has already become mainstream in many pioneer markets (notably China, South Korea, and US) and is making considerable progress elsewhere.

According to data collected by the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSMA), at the end of 2021, 176 mobile operators in 70 markets around the world had launched commercial 5G services. This includes 68 operators that offer 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services.

GSMA further projects that since 5G adoption has been rising, it will hit double digit figures this year, on average. This momentum has been boosted by a number of factors, including the economic from the pandemic, rising 5G handset sales, network coverage expansions and overall marketing efforts.

Take Samsung, for instance, it has revealed that it expects 5G smartphones to account for more than half of all smartphone sales in its portfolio in 2022.

The GSMA reports also suggests that a new wave of 5G roll-outs in large markets with modest income levels (such as Brazil, Indonesia, and India) could further incentivize the mass production of more affordable 5G devices to cater to consumers in lower income brackets. It could also drive the development of new 5G applications for consumers and enterprises in emerging markets.

It is a significant given that the majority of 5G applications and use cases to date have been focused on more advanced market. With this, the average retail price for a 5G phone has now fallen below $500, with devices under $150 available from some vendors.

With innovation around the 5G technology, these prices will further drop and help the technology penetrate the wider population. This bodes well for 5G adoption in less wealthy markets and opens the door to innovative services built around the technology.

When innovative services are built around the 5G technology, then the mobile industry will continue growing as it has been in the past few years. In fact, GSMA projects that there will be 1 billion 5G connections globally by 2025.

It’s time for 5G technology to help grow the mobile phone industry.