• South Korean giant is ranked fourth, after Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia.
• When it comes to 5G patents, Samsung is ranked second behind Huawei.
• Samsung has the largest international 5G portfolio followed by Huawei, LG, Nokia, ZTE and Ericsson.

Dubai:  Intensifying pressure from the US to block Huawei from Radio Access Network (RAN) market is clearing the way for Samsung to make major inroads into the 5G space.

The market leader, Huawei, is grappling with the US sanctions and the Trump administration is forcing all its allies to shut out the Chinese company from the RAN space.

Even though Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia account for three-quarters of the market, which is worth as much as $35 billion a year, Samsung is gaining market share, according to researcher Dell’Oro Group.

According to the research firm, Samsung is ranked fourth with about 13 per cent share of the market in 5G network sales.

In the 4G space, it has only around three per cent of the global market share.

Dell’Oro said the RAN market will grow at a healthy pace over the next three years. Cumulative investments over the 2019-2024 forecast period are expected to be over $200 billion.

The South Korean group, better known for its smartphones and chip business, is not new to the telecom industry and has been active for the past more than 40 years.  The group came into the limelight after the Huawei ban and won some major deals inside and outside South Korea.

By dealing a big blow to Nokia and Ericsson, Samsung won the $6.6 billion US Verizon deal in September, its biggest 5G contract so far.  The contract is valid until December 2025.

Making its presence felt globally

Inside South Korea, all of the three major mobile operators – LG Uplus, SK Telecom and KT – have placed orders for 28GHz 5G base stations from Samsung.

Outside the country, Samsung has won deals with Sprint, AT&T, US Cellular, KDDI (Japan), Telus and Videotron (Canada) and Spark (New Zealand).

The Korean giant is working with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and KDDI to develop 5G business models.

With the RAN market advancing at the fastest pace in nearly ten years, Stefan Pongratz, Vice-President with the Dell’Oro Group, said that there are signs that the market is accelerating at a much faster pace than initially expected.

Samsung has intensified its focus on 5G by spending more on research and development, and on developing industry standards and protocols.

According to the intellectual property group IPlytics, Huawei has the largest declared 5G portfolio as of November 2019, followed by the South Korean companies Samsung and LG and the Finnish company Nokia. Qualcomm and Intel are the largest US companies holding declared 5G patent families; Sharp and NTT DOCOMO are the largest Japanese 5G declaring companies.

The Chinese companies Vivo Mobile and Guangdong Oppo have newly entered the market.

Moreover, according to the number of declared 5G families that have been filed internationally (USPTO, EPO or PCT), Samsung has the largest international 5G portfolio followed by Huawei, LG, Nokia, ZTE and Ericsson.

When counting granted declared 5G patent families only, again Samsung owns the largest 5G portfolio, followed by LG, Nokia and Huawei.

The Chinese companies ZTE (7.4 per cent), China Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT) (11.7 per cent) and Oppo (9.5 per cent) as of November 2019.

Even though it is too early to talk about the 5G standards as 3GPP is still working on it, Samsung does not want to be left behind and has already released a white paper on 6G in July and expects new deployments as early as 2028.

The Korean player has teamed up with Intel, HP and SK Telecom to commercialise 5G virtualisation for easier cost and network optimisations for telecom operators.

Samsung is also an O-RAN or Open Radio Access Network alliance contributor.

Competition in the 5G space is going to fierce in the 5G RAN space as companies compete for trillions of dollars in investment.