The new year will see the large-scale launch of 5G wireless networks as the start of commercial services rapidly approaches, accounting firm Deloitte said this month.
In its latest annual report on technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) trends, Deloitte predicts that there will be 50 5G operators by 2020, from 25 next year.
As more countries develop 5G ecosystems for operators and users, about 20 handset vendors are expected to launch 5G-ready handsets next year, with the first available in the second quarter, the report said.
About 1 million handsets out of 1.5 billion smartphones expected to be sold next year would be 5G-ready, it said.
“At the end of 2020, we expect 5G handset sales (15-20 million units) to represent approximately 1 percent of all smartphone sales, with sales taking off in 2021, the first year in which retailers will sell more than 100 million 5G handsets,” Duncan Stewart, TMT research director for Deloitte Canada, and Paul Lee, head of the global TMT research, said in the report.
The most noticeable benefits of 5G technology for users would be faster data and lower latency, with the new technology likely to be used in three major applications from next year to 2020: smartphones, modems or hotspots and fixed-wireless access devices.
The first year of 5G might look a lot like the launch of 4G in late 2009 and early 2010 in terms of units, revenues and rollout, Deloitte said.
Most 5G subscribers would use the new technology as an alternative to a wired connection, not as a replacement for 4G, it said.
Even so, 4G is expected to become the most-used wireless technology worldwide next year, and its usage would not surpass 50 percent of all global subscribers until 2023, Deloitte said, hinting that 5G could be a niche technology even by 2025.
However, despite a rather slow rate of adoption in the next 12 to 24 months, 5G is the connectivity technology of the future, Deloitte said.
“Many telecommunications operators have a strong incentive to jump on the 5G bandwagon for reasons of speed, latency, penetration and (especially) capacity. When that happens, it should be a much faster world,” Stewart and Lee wrote.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last