5G Commercial 1St Anniversary: Embryonic Form Of Industrial Chain Ecology

In June 6, 2019, China's 5G licence was issued and the commercial tide was officially opened.

Over the past year, more than 250 thousand 5G base stations have been deployed, and the number of packages is over 5 million. Mobile phone manufacturers have announced that they will no longer publish 4G phones in the country. As of the first four months of this year, the cumulative volume of 5G mobile phones has jumped to nearly 50% in the domestic market, and the application direction of 5G has also surfaced.

With the acceleration of technological evolution and the gradual landing of business models, the new form of industrial chain has gradually formed.

"5G is a more populist network. Although 5G uses cloud computing, AI, big data and other high technology, the purpose of introducing these technologies is to make 5G better and cheaper. Recently, in an exclusive interview with the economic news reporters in twenty-first Century, Chen Zhiping, vice president of ZTE, pointed out that with the spread of 5G network and the popularity of 5G terminals, the 5G of the people will be accepted quickly by the public. 5G investment will enter a cycle of benign returns, and the proportion of the telecom industry's revenue in the whole GDP will also increase, because "intelligent society needs the network communication and the interconnection of all things." Growth is long-term. "

Although it is still in the 5G stage, the industrial chain's reserve for 6G has also started. Chen Zhiping told reporters that in the construction of 5G with the pace of domestic operators to promote, ZTE set up a special 6G research team in 2018.

"Technology, especially standard level research, will be ahead of commercial rhythm. 3GPP is still in the early stage of the definition of 6G, ZTE's vision for 6G is the physics and digital world of Chi Lian. The current research focuses on 6G network architecture, new spectrum, new gap and the combination of artificial intelligence and block chain technology. At the same time, we also pay close attention to 6G related underlying materials, devices and so on. She said so.

Infrastructure accelerated landing

In the era of 5G, operators' camps have changed the "three pillars" situation, forming a new "2+2" camp. Last September 9th, China Telecom and China Unicom announced that 5G will be built and shared. Recently China Mobile and China Radio and television also signed the 5G co construction and sharing cooperation framework agreement.

For a network that needs large-scale redeployment, it will undoubtedly ease the investment pressure of operators in the field of 5G, and improve the efficiency of network utilization, so as to accelerate the real landing of 5G.

In an interview recently, Paul Liu, President of OPPO China, believed that the speed of China's promotion of 5G was faster than that of the world, not only in terms of license issuance. "China's rapid pace of development, behind the reason is the systematic advance, including the construction of 5G base stations, tariffs and related policies launched by operators, all are accelerating the development of 5G."

The addition of new technologies will enable 5G to become more "Pro citizen" on the other hand. Chen Zhiping gave an example to reporters. For example, 5G adopted Massive MIMO technology, which promoted the spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency of the network several times (the power consumption per bit transmission), reflecting the reduction of the package fee (the same flow rate) at the consumer side. At the same time, when the newly increased 5G network traffic and user scale increase exponentially, by introducing AI and automatic operation and maintenance of big data, the operation and maintenance personnel workload of operators will not increase.

"ZTE has been committed to the minimalist 5G scheme, which is to provide minimal installation and minimalist operation and maintenance, which is basically to make 5G faster and better at the same time more economic." She said.

This is of great significance to the landing of the entire 5G industry ecosystem. According to Chen Zhiping, ZTE has built an open platform for cloud computing, big data and AI engine that has been proven mature in the 5G network. Combined with 5G itself, it has built an open platform for the digital transformation of vertical industry.

"Just like these new technologies enable the traditional telecommunications industry to achieve digital transformation in a few years, and greatly enhance efficiency. The digital transformation of the vertical industry will also greatly enhance their revenue and efficiency. The vertical industry will start massive digital transformation itself, which will bring massive users and traffic to 5G, and become a new source of huge revenue growth. At that time, operators will turn from CSP (communication service providers) to DSP (digital service providers).

This also reveals the industry chain's close attention to 5G business model exploration progress. As a huge industry that needs to invest in the early stage, it is very important to find the investment return in the late stage as soon as possible.

Chen Zhiping said that ZTE has been actively exploring the new 5G business mode of B2B2C, which adopts the technology of 5G network slicing and so on. That is, according to the needs of the industry, the operator adopts the network slicing technology to customize the 5G private network for the industry; the industry pays the customized 5G private network to the operators, and then provides a one-stop business experience for consumers through the integration of the 5G industry and its own business. The service business is directly charged to the industry.

"This new business mode has opened up a new revenue source for 2B for operators, and is expected to grow to be the main revenue point for operators. It has opened up new ideas for the early realization of 5G's investment profits." She added.

According to the introduction, in the industry application plan, ZTE focuses on the five ambassadors' platform, such as cloud and video, ubiquitous Internet of things, robot AI, security and high-precision positioning, and has explored 86 5G innovative application scenarios. The application of the on the rise will strengthen the industrial chain synergy and form breakthroughs in key industries such as intelligent manufacturing, smart grid and intelligent driving.

Terminal applications gradually sink

Under the premise of accelerating infrastructure construction and commercial exploration, the matrix of end product with 5G mobile phone is also sinking rapidly, which is a necessary condition for promoting large-scale commercial use of 5G.

Chen Zhiping told reporters that the maturity of 5G business is closely related to the development of terminals. In the past year, the terminal has begun to develop from the mobile phone products for personal consumers to the fields of family intelligence and industrial digital upgrading.

"5G needs to complete the industrial chain support to succeed in obtaining the business of the industrial Internet. The 5G industry terminals that need to meet the needs of the industry are highly efficient and flexible to achieve end to end delivery adaptation. In 2020, as the size of the volume, 5G terminal products will continue to improve the price performance ratio, prices gradually explored. The maturity and technology maturity of the 5G industry chain are rapidly increasing, and all kinds of chips, devices and modules are rapidly maturing and prices are gradually decreasing. This trend will continue. "

The current 5G terminal business and market education process has been very rapid, realme vice president and global marketing president Xu has obvious feelings, he recalled to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter, "I learned about the market in Yunnan last month, we observed that when customers enter the store, they will ask," is there a 5G phone to choose from? " It can be seen that users' demand for 5G is still very strong. Of course, it will be limited by the fact that the price of 5G terminal products is not comprehensive enough and the product diversity is not enough. The epidemic will also have some impact.

Another phenomenon he observed can be corroborated. According to China Mobile and China Telecom, in the first quarter, the number of 5G packages was about 50 million, but as of April, the sales volume of 5G products was only about 30000000. "This means that about 20000000 5G packages are still picking 5G products, and I believe there will be more popularity in the second half of the year."

It is also precisely because the price has not completely subsiding, the industry has a view that the 5G terminal active replacement tide has not appeared. Xu told reporters that with the 5G products falling at the price level, it will promote the emergence of the replacement tide. "The early 5G mobile phone is in the 4K price segment, and the user may not have a very strong replacement tide. But in the second half of the year, when the 1500 yuan 5G mobile phone appears one after another, I believe there will be a lot of replacement tide."

In addition, he pointed out that for many 4G users, if there is no killer application, it will not necessarily choose to switch, because the current 4G phone is enough. But if future operators' policies are adjusted, users will switch to 5G products one by one.

Despite the pressure of external environment in recent years, ZTE has adjusted the development of terminal business, but there is no doubt that the terminal business line is still necessary for ZTE to deploy 5G ecosystem.

Xu Feng, senior vice president of ZTE and President of terminal business department, told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that ZTE will continue to invest in terminal technology innovation, focusing on the two major development directions of communication capability and video algorithm.

It is reported that in 2020, ZTE will launch a total of more than 15 5G terminal products on the global scale. Among them, the whole market of China's products will attack 5G, and a variety of products will cover 1000 yuan to three thousand yuan stalls. Besides mobile phone products, the mobile broadband Internet products and IoT products will also be promoted. At the same time, the cloud platform will be built as the core to build Internet of things (I-IoT) and home mobile Internet (C-IoT). Integrated solutions such as V-IoV.

According to Paul Liu, OPPO's exploration focused on online games, video, future cloud storage, cloud APP and other aspects, and continued pre research. "I believe the whole industry will continue to invest. This development must be very fast and very positive."