5G seems to be the new wave of technological innovation which is expected to hit the shores of the smartphone world really hard in the coming year. And most of the major smartphone manufacturers seem to have already prepared their arks to ride through it. The latest market player to join the fleet is Huawei’s sub-brand, Honor. President of Honor, George Zhao, confirmed recently that the brand will indeed be launching their first 5G smartphone in the coming year of 2019. With the launch of Honor 5G smartphone, Huawei is eyeing to make Honor one of the biggest global smartphone brands in the next 3 years.
Launch of Honor 5G Smartphone
It has been known for some time that Huawei will be coming out with a 5G enabled smartphone of its own in 2019. But after the official press release, a lot of speculations have been made regarding the proximity of the releases of the two 5G smartphones, with reports suggesting that Honor might release its 5G smartphone ahead of that of Huawei. Zhao has also bared his expectations in front of the press. He claims that the release of Honor 5G smartphone will enable the company to become one of the top 5 smartphone brands by 2020, and breaking into the top 3 by 2022.
Regardless of all the goals set by the company for itself, no specific detail has yet been mentioned about their upcoming smartphone, other than its compatibility with the 5G network. It either might be an upgraded version of an already existing model or a new model altogether. That we have to wait and see.
The Advent of 5G
Honor isn’t the first smartphone brand to announce its foray into the 5G market from now. Most major smartphone manufacturers are looking to make the most of the 5G trend when it finally hits. Lenovo’s Vice President, Chang Cheng, has gone to the extent of confirming that their company will be the first to release a 5G enabled smartphone, with expected release estimated around late 2018 or early 2019. Other confirmed companies with forays into 5G include Oppo, One Plus and Vivo. It has also been rumoured that Samsung will enable the 5G feature in its upcoming S10 flagship phone.
Honestly, all these interested parties at this stage shouldn’t come off as a surprise. In the April of this year, it was reported that the number of 5G smartphones will exceed 100 million by the year 2021. Certain companies like Verizon and AT&T have made rapid progress in their plans for research and implementation of 5G, with the latter aiming to introduce the 5G network in about 12 US cities by the end of this year. The American Telecom giant has also gone on to announce its partnerships with Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia for the supply of equipment required for 5G. Companies like Ericsson and T-mobile have gone on to thrash out a deal worth $3.5 billion, sanctioning the supply of latest 5G radio hardware and 3GPP from the former to the latter.
As evident, everyone wants a bite of the cherry and are devising new plans to make it possible. All these deals and strides made by the companies to get into the market point in the direction that 5G is coming really soon. But who profits the most when the tide actually hits, we’ll have to wait and see.
