LG Electronics Places 5th
Samsung Electronics is the world’s No. 2 after Huawei of China in terms of the number of standard patents for 5th-generation (5G) mobile telecommunications.
LG Electronics finished 5th after Qualcomm and Nokia. Analysts say that Korea's leading ICT companies are showing an edge in 5G technology competition.
The number of Samsung Electronics’ granted 5G patent families stood at 2,628, according to a recent report released by IPlytics, a German patent information analysis company.
The figure is a sum of 5G patents approved by patent authorities in countries around the world for applications filed by Samsung Electronics from January 2017 to October 2020.
The number of Samsung Electronics’ granted 5G patents was tallied at 1,746 in November 2019. The figure rose about 51 percent in just 10 months.
China's Huawei claimed the first spot with 2,993 patents, 300 more than Samsung Electronics. The two were followed by Qualcomm (2,323 patents), Nokia (1,963 patents) and LG Electronics (1,663 patents)
A total of 17,179 5G technology patents were approved worldwide with Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics accounting for a combined 23.2 percent of them, according to the report.
This means that Korean companies have 23 out of 100 global 5G patents.
Unlike patent approval, Samsung Electronics ranked third with 4,052 declarations of patents. Declarations of patents are submitted by companies to ensure that major technical contents are true to register patents. In terms of declarations of patents, Huawei grabbed the first spot with 6,372 declarations, while Qualcomm placed second with 4,590 declarations. Finland's Nokia (2,690 declarations) and LG Electronics (2,666 declarations) also broke into the top five club.
All of the top five companies in declarations of patents were also the top five in parent approval.
However, Nokia marked the highest percentage of patents actually approved with 72.97 percent, followed by Samsung Electronics (64.86 percent), LG Electronics (62.38 percent) and Qualcomm (50.61 percent).
The patent approval rate of Huawei which picked up first place in both patent declaration and approval indicators stood at 46.97 percent, less than half of the two indicators. ZTE (20.82 percent), Xiaomi (13.2 percent), Oppo (8.42 percent), and Vivo (5.52 percent) recorded low approval rates among Chinese companies except Huawei.