According to a new report issued by Financial Times, technology companies Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia have all set their sights on the next great frontier in the mobile technology market. Laboratories filled with electronics engineers and developers around the world are currently locked in a bitter fight against one another to be the first to develop true 5G products for consumers everywhere.
Many of these companies, which Financial Times reports also includes giants like Samsung, hope to develop the types of patents and the electronics components that they need to support 5G capabilities by as soon as 2018. Ericsson in particular recently stated that they believe there will be 50 billion devices connected to cellular data networks around the world by 2022, which means that the major benefits that 5G brings with it need to get here sooner rather than later.
What is 5G?
5G is heralded by technology industry professionals as “the next major phase” of standards in the mobile telecommunications industry. In order to be considered 5G, a product needs to be capable of data transfer rates of several tens of megabytes per seconds or more, needs to be able to allow for several hundreds of thousands of users who are all connected to the same network at the same time, and should have spectral efficiency that is dramatically enhanced when you consider what 4G networks are currently capable of.
The Race for 5G – What Does It Mean?
On the surface, this new found “race for 5G” is absolutely a good thing for consumers everywhere. This means that the smartphones and other mobile devices of tomorrow are going to get faster while you browse the Internet. They’re going to allow you to make calls with greater reliability and they’re going to help make sure that you always have a strong cell phone signal wherever you go, regardless of factors like the weather or geography.
For electronic device manufacturers, this means that electronics components have become more important than ever. Not only do the networks themselves have to be upgraded to support this 5G standards, but the electronics components that devices run on need to advance, as well.
Because the data flow of the 5G standard is estimated at 100 to 1000 times greater than what 4G is capable of on the best of days, high quality electronics components are integral to this particular equation. The inner workings of smartphones and similar types of devices essentially need to leap forward in a pretty staggering way, all while getting physically smaller and smaller to support the “extreme mobility” trend that users have been embracing for the last several years.
As many different mobile technology businesses race to be the first to release 5G products to market, their relationship with electronics components suppliers becomes more and more important. Keep in mind that one product that underperforms could potentially undermine an entire business. In the world of mobile technology where new products are being released on a seemingly daily basis, reputation is of paramount of importance. A product that lacks the right electronic parts to live up to its promises could cause damage to a reputation that even the largest companies may never recover from.
As a result, electronics components suppliers like Verical.com have gone to great lengths to help address certain supply chain challenges and other issues that businesses in this industry are facing on an increasingly regular basis. Vertical has developed a pedigree scoring system, for example, to help clue in developers onto the origin of a particular type of part, its intended use, its warranty status, its overall quality and more. Not only does this help to address issues like counterfeiting, but it also helps significantly with purchasing decisions by providing actionable information that companies can use to make sure that they’re always moving forward in the right way.