The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today reported that the number of commercially available 5G devices had increased by 41% in the last month.  There are now 95 different 5G devices now commercially available out of over 280 announced devices. This demonstrates continued and significant growth since GSA’s last report in March, which recorded 253 announced devices, of which at least 67 were commercially available at that time.

Editor’s Note:  We wonder if any of the announced “5G’ devices can operate on more than one network?  With the exception of China and Korea where networks are coordinated by the central government, almost all other 5G networks use 3GPP Release 15 “5G NR” for the data plane (some use a proprietary protocol for data plane) and LTE infrastructure for everything else- signaling, mobile packet core (EPC), network management, etc.  We don’t know of any 5G Stand Alone networks that have been commercially deployed.  The situation won’t improve much when IMT 2020 is standardized as there will be three different data plane radios to chose from: 3GPP Release 15/16 5GNR, DECT/ETSI NR and Nufront NR.

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‘‘In what is clearly a very challenging time globally with social distancing and fundamental changes to the way we work and live, connectivity has never been more critical,” commented Joe Barrett, President of GSA. “Around the world we are seeing mobile operators take unprecedented steps to support their subscribers and boost capacity, with 5G a vital part part of their immediate and future strategies. As this data shows, we’re also seeing the vendor community working hard to bring devices to market even quicker to support the rollout and expansion of new 5G services, with smartphones accounting for over 85% of the new commercially available devices recorded this month.

“Based on vendors’ statements, we can expect more than 35 additional announced devices to become commercially available before the end of June 2020,” Barrett continued. “At GSA we’ll will be tracking and reporting regularly on these 5G device launch announcements for the industry as we continue to take the temperature of the 5G ecosystem.”

Part of the GSA Analyser for Mobile Broadband Devices (GAMBoD) database, the GSA’s 5G device tracking reports global device launches across the 5G ecosystem and contains key details about device form factors, features and support for spectrum bands. Access to the GAMBoD database is only available to GSA Members and to GSA Associates subscribing to the service.

The April 2020 5G Ecosystem Report containing summary statistics can be downloaded for free from https://gsacom.com/paper/5g-devices-april-2020-global-ecosystem/​

By mid-April 2020, GSA had identified:

•          16 announced form factors

•          81 vendors that had announced available or forthcoming 5G devices

•          283 announced devices (including regional variants, and phones that can be upgraded using a separate adapter, but excluding prototypes not expected to be commercialised and operator-branded devices that are essentially rebadged versions of other phones), including at least 95 that are commercially available:

o       108 phones (up 21 from mid-March), at least 64 of which are now commercially available (up 24 in a month). Includes three phones that are upgraded to offer 5G using an adapter.

o       79 CPE devices (indoor and outdoor, including two Verizon-spec compliant devices not meeting 3GPP 5G standards), at least 14 of which are now believed to be commercially available

o       47 modules

o       19 hotspots (including regional variants), at least nine of which are now commercially available

o       5 laptops (notebooks)

o       5 industrial grade CPE/routers/gateways

o       20 other devices (including drones, head mounted displays, robots, snap-on dongles/adapters, a switch, tablets, TVs, USB terminals/dongles/modems and a vending machine)

GSA also tracks spectrum band support of 5G devices and has identified spectrum support information for just over three-quarters of all announced devices. 70% of all announced 5G devices are identified as supporting sub-6 GHz spectrum bands while 29.3% are understood to support mmWave spectrum. Just 22.6% of all announced devices are known to support both mmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum bands. The bands known to be most supported by all announced 5G devices are n78, n41, n79 and n77. In April the number of announced devices known to support band 78 has passed the 100 mark for the first time, reaching 103 devices.

About GSA:

GSA is the voice of the global mobile ecosystem representing companies engaged in the supply of infrastructure, semiconductors, test equipment, devices, applications and mobile support services. The organisation plays a central role in promoting 3GPP technology, advocating spectrum policies and stimulating IMT industry development. The association is a single source of information for industry reports and market intelligence