4G services have accumulated 4.91 billion subscribers at the end of 2021
“Taiwan’s ICT companies have a longtime focus on hardware advancement, capable of agile and flexible development to adapt to unprecedented circumstances. For example, the services and system integration providers can team up with Taiwan ICT suppliers to develop 5G services targeting different industries vertically such as smart cities, transportation, banking, and smart manufacturing, then sky will be the limit for the global 5G application growth,” said Roger Huang, research director of DIGITIMES. According to GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association), only 218 telecom operators from 87 countries have successfully launched 5G services to their customers, in comparison with 4G LTE, which has a drastic difference of 760 operators. “There are still 2/3 worldwide operators looking to invest in the 5G market,” said Huang.
Statistics from Ericsson, one of the world’s leading ICT companies, indicated that 4G services have accumulated 4.91 billion subscribers at the end of 2021 and will reach their all-time peak of 5 billion users at the end of 2022. For now, there are only 555 million 5G users with a 6.85 per cent penetration rate. It is still at the starting point for the 5G service life cycle.
“5G users are growing rapidly worldwide, reaching 690 million users as of June and could possibly exceed one billion by the end of 2022,” said Huang. It is expected by 2027, 5G users will hit a penetration rate of 48.3 per cent accumulating over 4.37 billion users while overtaking LTE users. Telecom operators, services providers, and system integrators are optimistic about the current inclination, however, the one that can provide the well-suited product for the constantly growing market wins the 5G battle in the long run.
Huang pointed out that companies including Aewin, Askey, Alpha Network, Arcadyan, Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tmytek are the major suppliers for 5G customer premise equipment (CPE), small-cell all-in-ones, as well as Open-RAN radio units (RU), distributed units (DU), central units (CU), and transport networks.
These companies mainly devoted themselves to the development of small cells which is especially relevant for 5G private networks, one of the most crucial 5G use cases with the potential to reach $US4,719 million over the next five years, growing at a CAGR of 39.2 per cent, according to sources from ResearchAndMarkets. “As the demand for digital transformation for enterprises has rapidly increased every year, driving the growth for small cells,” said Huang.
