The Global (mobile) Suppliers Association says the number of announced 5G devices rose by 3.2% in March 2022, bringing the total number to 1,334, 677 of which are mobile phones.
Elsewhere in its ‘5G-Ecosystem Summary April 2022’ report, the GSA identified 24 form factors of 5G devices from 191 manufacturers.
Acting something like a census of all the 5G enabled kit on the market, the GSA identified a total number of 1,334 announced products, with at least 1,000 are available to buy. It categorises the ecosystem like this:
- 677 phones
- 213 fixed wireless access customer-premises equipment (CPE) devices for indoor and outdoor uses
- 174 modules
- 85 industrial or enterprise routers, gateways or modems
- 55 battery-operated hot spots
- 33 tablets
- 28 laptops or notebooks
- 11 in-vehicle routers, modems or hot spots
- 8 USB terminals, dongles or modems
- 52 other devices, including drones, head-mounted displays, robots, TVs, cameras, femtocells/small cells, repeaters, vehicle on-board units, a snap-on dongle/adapter, a switch, a vending machine and an encoder
- 722 announced devices with declared support for standalone 5G in sub-6 GHz bands, 537 of which are commercially available.
“The first quarter of the year was off to a flying start for the 5G ecosystem with the industry breaking through the symbolic barrier of 1000 commercially available devices, and there many more to come,” said Joe Barrett, President of the GSA. “Indeed, based on manufacturers’ previous statements and recent rates of device release, we might expect the number of commercial devices to approach the 1,200 mark by the end of the second quarter of 2022. The 5G ecosystem still has an important room for growth and we are looking forward to seeing it grow whether it is through the number of devices, the number of networks or the number of end-users.”
Those that don’t work within the telecoms industry probably almost exclusively associate 5G with mobile phones, but of course its much wider than that and in fact the more convincing use cases are often provided by things like industrial fixed applications of the technology. You can decide for yourself how big a milestone is it that there are now over 1000 different 5G enabled bits of kit available, but it certainly indicates a growing ecosystem and a wider set of hardware solution seems bound to help future adoption.
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