The outbreak of 5G mobile phones has accounted for more than half of the market, but 5G is not obvious to consumers

Entering 2020, the smartphone market can be said to have completely cut into the 5G track. Almost no mobile phone manufacturer will release a 4G flagship mobile phone in 2020. Even Apple, which is as stable as an old dog, has released all iPhone 12s supporting 5G networks this year. There is no doubt that the 5G mobile phone market has exploded.   China Academy of Information and Communications Technology announced the latest domestic mobile phone shipments. From January to October 2020, the total domestic mobile phone market shipments totaled 252 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 22.1%. From January to October, the cumulative shipments of 5G mobile phones in the domestic market were 124 million units, accounting for 49.4% of the total, nearly half of them.

Entering October, with the launch of the Apple iPhone 12 series, the proportion of 5G mobile phone shipments will be even more exaggerated. In October 2020, the domestic market shipped 16.760 million 5G mobile phones, accounting for 64.1% of the mobile phone shipments during the same period; 16 new models were launched, accounting for 57.1% of the number of new mobile phone models launched in the same period.

With the massive "invasion" of 5G mobile phones in the market, it means that to some extent, 4G mobile phones will soon be "eliminated".   However, for consumers, the current 5G network does not seem to have any impact. Many netizens said that the current 5G network is meaningless other than testing network speed.   In fact, it is true that many consumers are still using 4G network packages after purchasing 5G mobile phones. The high price of 5G packages is of course a very real problem, but this is not a reason to hinder the continued development of 5G users. The main reason why there is no experience gap between 4G mobile phones and 5G mobile phones is that "killer" applications that rely on 5G networks have not yet appeared.

Before the commercialization of 5G networks, people's vision for 5G was very "romantic", such as cloud gaming, cloud office, autonomous driving, and all-system projections. However, after a year of commercial use of 5G, the application scenarios of 5G have not landed. Why does this happen?   At the previous China International Information and Communication Exhibition, Ding Yun, president of Huawei operator BG pointed out this problem. He mentioned the current 5G problems of "fake, dumb, and poor". There are currently over 100 million 5G users in China. However, many users have bought 5G packages, but they are not using 5G mobile phones; users with 5G mobile phones may not have 5G coverage in their areas. On the whole, "machine", " The matching degree between "net" and "set" is still not high.

Wen Ku, Director of the Information and Communication Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, pointed out that my country will still be in the lead-in period of 5G development in the next three years, and it is necessary to adhere to a moderately advanced pace of construction and strive to form a good 5G development model of “building and promoting use”. This means that in the next three years, 5G is still in its infancy, and the scene is far away.   In April of this year, the three major operators announced that they will launch "5G News" jointly to launch the "5G News", which will transform and upgrade traditional short messages in a native way. In addition, the Global Association for Mobile Communications System GSMA plans to include 5G messaging as a mandatory feature of 5G terminals. Users can replace 5G mobile phones or upgrade existing 4G/5G mobile phones without downloading the client to easily use 5G messaging services.

For a time, "5G news" was widely promoted as a "killer" application in the 5G era. However, half a year later, the "5G news" of the three major operators is still advancing with difficulty. Judging from the current progress, "5G News" is still in the experimental stage.   Industry insiders said that 5G news will open up a market of 100 billion yuan, but it is inseparable from the cooperation of the upstream and downstream of the industry chain, and it still needs to be promoted through the coordination of the three operators and the majority of partners.   There is no doubt that we are currently in the 5G "introduction phase", various infrastructure conditions are not yet mature, and consumers must be prepared for the long-term failure of 5G scenarios. But consumers should continue to be patient, because after the "introduction period" is naturally a period of explosive demand.