If I had a nickel for every time I heard 5G today, that would be a really weird way to make money. I can’t take credit for that line, but I can testify to just how 5G-focused this year’s conference is. Every single meeting I’ve had so far has had a 5G component to it, if not fully 5G-themed. We’ve been talking about 5G for years and you can find our detailed forecasts on 5G tablets and 5G notebooks, so we have a solid outlook on when they’re coming and why. The difference today is that these views are being validated in Barcelona.
The biggest splash has been the number of 5G smartphones announced for 2019 so far, which is a good first indicator of the seriousness from OEMs, mobile carriers, and component vendors. We talked about the Huawei Mate X tablet/smartphone foldable yesterday, which will only come in a 5G SKU. Today, Qualcomm announced that Lenovo will utilize its Snapdragon 8cx mobile computing CPU to release a 5G notebook and hinted pretty strongly that it will be available this year.
It’s worth noting that skepticism was high last year when industry players started moving the 5G timeline up to 2019; now, the questions have moved from “is this real,” to, “how do we best monetize this opportunity.” More on that topic in our wrap-up report coming in March.