Challenging to Qualcomm
According to industry sources on February 11, Samsung Electronics, Apple and Huawei are working on 5G chipsets amid Qualcomm planning to supply its 5G chipset to manufacturers of smartphone, PC and virtual reality (VR) device starting from next year.
Qualcomm announced on February 9 that 19 manufacturers adopted its Snapdragon X50 5G New Radio (NR) modem in order to release 5G devices in 2019. According to Qualcomm, the manufacturers include LG Electronics, Sony, Asus, HTC, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. The modem scheduled to be supplied to them starting from next year supports a frequency band of 6 GHz or less and a millimeter wave frequency band.
The 19 companies do not include Samsung Electronics, Apple and Huawei, which are the three largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. It is said that the three companies are working on 5G chipsets on their own.
Samsung Electronics recently decided to release a 5G smartphone early next year and unveiled a 5G tablet PC with KT at the 2018 Winter Olympics. The tablet PC terminal uses a chipset developed by Samsung Electronics. According to industry insiders, Samsung Electronics did not join Qualcomm because international 5G standards have yet to be established and the membership was unnecessary with Samsung Electronics itself developing a 5G chipset. Samsung smartphones are currently using both Samsung Exynos processors and Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.
Apple, in the meantime, incorporated its A11 processor into iPhone 8 and iPhone X, which use Qualcomm and Intel chips as well. Huawei developed the Kirin 970 mobile AI processor and built it into its flagship smartphone last year while using Qualcomm chips, too.