- 5G smartphones will grow at an annual growth rate of 43% between 2020 and 2025 compared to the annual growth rate of 4.3% for total devices sales.
- More than 60 per cent of all 5G smartphones shipped in 2022 will be priced below $600.
- Share of 5G smartphone sales will increase from 15% this year to 73% by 2025.
Dubai: Share of 5G smartphone sales will increase from 15 per cent this year to 73 per cent by 2025, fuelled by more diverse and affordable devices.
David McQueen, Research Director at ABI Research, said that 5G smartphones will reach 1.15 billion units by 2025 compared to 192.1 million this year.
“5G smartphones will become the most accelerated mobile technology generation ever launched. It is expected that 5G smartphone sales will increase more aggressively compared to 4G and, in comparison to growth at launch, 5G will outperform its predecessor on nearly every metric, including the number of mobile devices, subscribers, and networks,” he said.
Furthermore, he said that volume sales will outstrip 4G for many years, largely driven by China in the early years.
The total smartphone sales will grow at an annual rate of 4.3 per cent from 1.28 billion in 2020 to 1.58 billion in 2025.
At the same time, McQueen said that 5G smartphones will grow at an annual growth rate of 43 per cent between 2020 and 2025 and more affordable 5G smartphones will accelerate the adoption after 2021.
“Many lead vendors expected to push deeper into the segment, quickly democratising the 5G experience and establishing a wider ecosystem,” he said.
Affordable 5G chipset platforms
More than 60 per cent of all 5G smartphones shipped in 2022 will be priced below $600, he added.
However, he said the seismic shift to lower price tiers will be underpinned by cheaper components and the continuing availability of more affordable 5G chipset platforms, notably those from Qualcomm, MediaTek and UNISOC.
“Conversely, with the expected frantic pace of plunging 5G smartphone prices, it means 5G at the high-end will be squeezed, witnessing rapid saturation while collapsing potential increases in revenue and margins,” he said.
Although the rapid growth of 5G will provide the mobile smartphone supply chain with new opportunities until 2022, he said the rapid saturation of the 5G smartphone market means that Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and chipset suppliers should reduce their reliance on the smartphone market beyond 2023 and starts to think about new revenue opportunities.
ABI Research believes always-on and 5G-connected personal computers (PCs), 5G customer premises equipment (CPE), and enterprise 5G devices all have the potential to become the new cash cows of the 5G value chain in the longer term.
Common architecture needed
According to the research firm, shipments of connected notebooks will grow to 21.5 million by 2025 at an annual growth rate of 46 per cent, with a 97 per cent share connected to 5G.
Despite the cellular-connect notebook market witnessing a series of false dawns, he said the notebook and mobile value chains are on the edge of converging with shipments of ”always-on” notebooks expected to grow significantly.
“This harmonisation will be brought about by positioning 5G connectivity as a central pillar in the design of notebooks and PCs, with a focus on long battery life, thin and light designs, offering always-on, always-connected experiences,” he said.
Such a move has been sparked by a shift to ARM-based chips, he said and added that it not only brings deep integration between software and hardware, harnessing innovation and connectivity that has been nurtured for years in smartphones but also gains in efficiencies and better battery life without sacrificing performance.
“So, implementing a common architecture will allow all mobile device types, encompassing smartphones, tablets, notebooks and wearables, to work together more seamlessly opening the door to unique value propositions and improved new User Experiences (UX), which will also be much easier for developers to create new types of mobile consumer and business applications,” he said.
Companies such as Qualcomm, Intel, MediaTek, Samsung, Huawei and Apple are all at the forefront pursuing this strategy, with many connected notebook models expected to appear starting in 2022.
Crucial to success, McQueen said will be partnerships within the sector bringing engineering, system integration, and connectivity expertise together, as well as the notable inclusion of Apple from 2022 to the 5G always-on notebooks camp, which could be the catalyst that the industry has craved to help bolster demand and deliver on the promise of enhanced, next-generation mobile compute experiences.