As 5G networks are rolled out, smartphone OEMs telecom players are rapidly gearing towards the shift, with telecom service providers across the globe upgrading to 5G networks, which rely on denser arrays of small antennas to offer ultra-high data speeds.
There has been a surge in high-quality video and audio content as well. Among the digital devices, mobile devices have taken over as the preferred medium of consuming online media, including live video streaming, file sharing, audio streaming, and running business applications, among others. However, current LTE technologies do not entirely support all these applications. This has been a significant factor driving the adoption of 5G, for high internet speeds and coverage, as well as reduced latency.
5G is expected to add several layers of complexity to the spectrum, due to the all-inclusive nature of services that it supports, from extreme broadband services to massive machine-type communications (mMTC) and ultra-reliable MTC. Every application demands its own position in the spectrum depending on its requirements.
Over the forecast period, as more countries acquire the required infrastructure to support 5G, and with an increasing demand for faster data transfers and reliance on cloud technology, the demand for 5G chipsets is expected to surge, creating an immense market potential for 5G chipset market.
The “5G Chipset Market – Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2020 – 2025)” report is now available from ResearchAndMarkets.com. The global 5G chipset market was evaluated from 2019, as the technology has not yet been commercialized in 2018. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 87.8% over the forecast period (2020-2025).
Key Market Trends
Industrial Automation to Account for Significant Share
- The manufacturing companies across the world are under immense pressure due to shorter product and business lifecycles and intense volatility in the business. The profit margins are getting squeezed as the workforce is aging, and components increasingly become more varied and complicated to manufacture.
- Internet of Things (IoT), coupled with the 5G network, is expected to enhance the aforementioned business issues associated with industrial automation. The enhanced network provides manufacturers to build smart factories and leverage emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, augmented reality, and automation.
- In the future, the smart factories are expected to comprise several sensors to monitor various aspects of the working environment. The 5G network is likely to offer low-latency, wireless flexibility, and high capacity performance to the smart factories enabling them to overcome challenges in the production environment. As a result, it creates immense opportunities for chipset manufacturers to invest mainly in devices used in industrial automation.
- In industrial automation, 5G acts as an enabler to new operating models. Notably, the wireless industry needs to engage with future customers and potential users.
North America to Account for Largest Share
North America is expected to account for the significant market share of the 5G chipset market, and dominance is mainly due to the high rate of adoption of advanced technologies in the market studied.
The region is also home to Qualcomm, a dominant player in smartphone communications chips, making half of all core baseband radio chips in smartphones. It is one of the big U.S. technology companies, with a major role in the global 5G chipset market.
In December 2019, Qualcomm announced the newest iteration of its Snapdragon mobile processors for 5G. The flagship Snapdragon 865 is a natural successor to 855 chipset that is released in 2018, and is expected to be the chipset powering the phones in 2020, like the Samsung Galaxy S11, Note 11, LG G9, OnePlus 8, Google Pixel 5.
According to Ericsson, North America is anticipated to lead the 5G mobile technology, with all the major operators stating their intentions to deploy the 5G early.
Competitive Landscape
The 5G Chipset Market is moderately fragmented as all the companies involved in the production of 5G chipsets in the current market scenario are highly competitive and mostly market incumbents. All of them have equally high R&D capabilities, and all of them have equally effective competitive strategies. Such competition, even before commercialization of the product, indicates a high probability of an increase in the competitive rivalry over the forecast period. Due to this, the market is highly fragmented.
Some of the key players in the 5G chipset market are Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung. Qualcomm announced that its upcoming flagship mobile platform will feature a system-on-chip (SoC) built on the 7nm process node. The 7nm SoC can be paired with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem, which is anticipated to be the first 5G-capable mobile platform for smartphones and other mobile devices.
Notable Industry Developments
In September 2019, Samsung Electronics announced the Exynos 980 mobile processor equipped with an integrated 5G modem that delivers a downlink speed of up to 2.55Gbps. Additionally, the integration of modem and mobile processor into a single chip leads to less space utilization and power efficiency.
In January 2020, MediaTek introduced its Dimensity 800 Series 5G chipset family that may bring flagship features, power, and performance to new premium mid-range 5G smartphones. MediaTek’s Dimensity 5G chipset family offers powerful system-on-chips (SoCs) with integrated 5G modems. The single chip solutions offer an unrivaled combination of connectivity, multimedia, AI, and imaging innovations packed into an ultra-efficient 7 nanometer chip. The first devices, featuring Dimensity 800 Series SoCs, are expected to launch in the first half of 2020.
Source: Research and Markets
