Number of 5G devices tops 500 in GSA key indicator
The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has announced that the number of announced 5G devices has passed 500 for the first time.
More than 300 5G devices are already commercially available, nearly 60 per cent of the 519 announced devices.
The metric is considered a good indicator of the uptake of new technology such as 5G. In the past three months, the number of announced 5G devices has increased by 29.4 per cent. The number of available devices grew by 59.5 per cent.
GSA president Joe Barrett said, “The status of device launches and availability can tell us a great deal about the wider health of the 5G ecosystem. This year we’ve seen more and more symbolically important milestones being passed – over 500 announced 5G devices, more than 100 vendors, over 250 different phones, and 100 fixed wireless access CPE devices. And it doesn’t stop there; we expect more 5G devices to become commercially available, surpassing the 330 mark before the year is out. The device vendor community has stepped up and delivered in the face of unprecedented challenges. As an industry, we can be excited about the opportunities 2021 will bring.”
5G device stats (to end of November 2020)
• 20 announced form factor
• 104 vendors who had announced available or forthcoming 5G device34 vendors have now produced or announced plans to produce 5G phones
• 55 vendors have now produced or announced plans to launch their own indoor or outdoor 5G FWA CPE devices
• 519 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 303 that are understood to be commercially available
• 251 phones (up 10 from October), at least 205 of which are now commercially available (up 36 in a month). Includes three phones that are upgraded to offer 5G using an adapter
100 FWA CPE devices (indoor and outdoor), at least 34 of which are commercially available. These numbers have been restated this month with fixed wireless industrial/enterprise gateway devices (generally designed for IoT or private network applications rather than public broadband services) now counted separately72 modules, at least 23 of which are commercially available
• 26 industrial/enterprise routers/gateway/modem, at least 14 of which are commercially available
• 26 hotspots (including regional variants), at least 16 of which are commercially available
• 9 laptops (notebooks), at least one of which is commercially available
• 7 tablets, at least six of which are commercially available
• 28 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)
GSA has identified some spectrum support information for over 84% of all announced devices: 80.3% of all announced 5G devices are identified as supporting sub-6 GHz spectrum bands, while 19.7% are understood to support mmWave spectrum and 15.6% of all announced devices are known to support both mmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum bands.
The figures can be found in the December 2020 5G Ecosystem Report.
