Although the first 5G commercial handsets will go on sale from early 2019, sales will not begin to scale up until 2021 when volumes approach five percent of global handset sales, according to Strategy Analytics. “5G smartphone sales will begin in China, Japan, South Korea and the USA from 2019,” says Senior Analyst Ville-Petteri Ukonaho. “But volumes in 2019 will be in just the millions, and only barely in the tens of millions in 2020.”
As you would expect, in the very-early days of a new mobile network deployment, especially in larger countries, coverage will not be ubiquitous, limiting the value of the new devices.
Low volume also will mean that suppliers will be careful about ramping up production. And low volume will mean relatively-higher prices.
None of that is unusual.
Use cases might also matter. Though most consumers would agree that much-faster is better, they might disagree about how much they are willing to spend to upgrade devices--especially when selection is limited and prices are high--when there actual use cases do not benefit much--if at all--from the lower latency and higher bandwidth 5G will supply.
What could change? Customers might find mobile entertainment video offerings are more compelling than at present. Augmented reality apps might take off. Or more customers might find the killer app is the ability to cut the cord on fixed network internet access subscriptions. It just is hard to say right now.
Some might argue that 5G versions of tethering (using the mobile internet connection for in-home device support) and direct access (to support apps used on the mobile device), will be early important use cases.
For a growing number of users, that already is the case in the 4G era, and the range of use cases will be even more compelling when 5G speed and latency are available.
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