The “Smartphone Industry Chain Summit 2019 – Growth Opportunity and Technical Challenges in the 5G Era”, jointly held by Counterpoint Research and Reed Expo, concluded in Shenzhen on Nov 22, 2019.

During the summit, analysts from Counterpoint Research and guest speakers from Qualcomm, ZTE, Huaqin Telecom, Tianma, and more, shared their views on the latest trends, forecasts and technological developments in the upcoming 5G era. Here we provide highlights from the event.

Event Recap

James Yan, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, presented the top 10 trends in the global smartphone market in 2020. His presentation included global and regional smartphone market growth forecasts, 5G smartphones penetration, growth of foldable smartphones, components and manufacturing trends and more. You can find the full report in our Research Portal (Industry Beats > Standard).

Brady Wang, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, covered market trends and challenges of smartphones with multiple cameras. Brady’s topic covered smartphone camera megapixel trends, camera setup development, application of AI in cameras, and forecasts on the mainstream technologies of smartphone cameras in 2020. You can find the full report in our Research Portal (Industry Beats > Standard).

Jene Park, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research, presented an overview of global 5G development and success cases from the Korean market. During the presentation, Jene shared with the audience Counterpoint’s forecast on the 5G development roadmap, development pace of 5G vs. LTE, 5G smartphones BOM (Bill of Materials) cost analysis, and strategies of Korean telecom operators to efficiently reach a million subscribers. You can find the full report in our Research Portal (Industry Beats > Standard).

Mr. Jiming Guo, Product Marketing Director at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., presented how comprehensive system–level solutions will speed up the launch of commercial 5G devices. Mr. Guo shared Qualcomm’s end-to-end 5G solutions covering modems, RF systems, antennas and more. He also talked about how the comprehensive system-level solutions will facilitate the development of 5G devices, Qualcomm’s 7 series 5G SoC (System on Chip) platform, and how Qualcomm will continue to invest in cloud, big data, AI training, edge computing and extensive partnerships to achieve the possibilities in the future Rel-16 and Rel-17 scenarios.

Mr. Qianhao Lv, Head of Consumer Experiences & Strategy at ZTE Corporation, spoke about the aspiration of ZTE in the upcoming 5G and IoE (Internet of Everything) era. Mr. Lv believed that while 4G has had an impact on people’s lifestyles, 5G will make an impact on society as a whole and will bring human beings to a real connected and intelligent world. According to ZTE, development of 5G will be much faster than 4G and 3G, and the average data consumption by users is expected to evolve from kilobytes in the 2G era, megabytes in the 3G era, gigabytes in the 4G era to terabytes in the 5G era. ZTE has invested heavily in 5G technologies and become one of the leaders in global 5G patents. As for smartphones, ZTE believed that the form factor design of products, photographic capability and pervasive AI experience, will be the key factors to out-compete in the 5G device market. In the area of industrial applications, ZTE’s industrial OS and ZTE database products for finance companies have been successfully commercialized.

Mr. Zhigang Wang, Marketing Director from the leading ODM, Huaqin Telecom, presented Huaqin’s strategy to seize 5G opportunities. Mr. Wang talked about Huaqin’s strengths and expertise in offering turnkey products development services covering product design, manufacturing, cost saving, quality control and logistics. According to forecasts from Huaqin Telecom, there is still immense growth potential for smartphone ODMs despite saturation of the overall smartphone market. The annual market size for smartphone ODMs is expected to grow and reach 500 million units in the coming years. In emerging products category, Huaqin Telecom is positive on the growth potential for smartwatches, TWS (True Wireless Stereo Headphones), smart speakers and home robots, in the consumer market. In the industrial sector, Huaqin emphasized on opportunities in XR, industrial robots, autonomous driving, drones and connectivity modules.

Mr. Canghai Wang, Senior Marketing Manager of Tianma Microelectronics Co.,Ltd., talked about the top 10 development trends in 5G smartphone display panels. According to Mr Wang’s presentation, multiple display designs and technologies will be developed in the 5G era, with flexible OLED displays emerging to become the market mainstream, On-cell-touch (Touch on TFE) becoming the mainstream in OLED display, and punch-hole display design getting increasingly prevalent. The growth of large-sized displays will continue, penetration of the under-display fingerprint sensor technology will be accelerated, and emerging products, such as foldable display smartphones, multi-screen smartphones and gaming smartphones will get more attention in the market.

During the Q&A session, analysts and guest speakers answered questions from the audience. The discussion towards 5G, new technologies and hardware market opportunities remained lively, even after the event.

Q&A Moments

Counterpoint analysts and guest speakers