Many people today forget that the global 4G LTE smartphone and featurephone industry actually remains huge.

By shipments, 4G is bigger (for now) than 5G in 2021.

India, Africa, and South America still buy hundreds of millions of 4G handsets, and will continue to do so for several years to come.

Samsung is still the worldwide 4G phone leader in 2021, as it has been for most of the past decade. Its retail network and model lineup are unmatched, despite fierce competition from Xiaomi, Transsion, and others.

The hard part, of course, will be to maintain profits in 4G over the next decade, as volumes peak, prices dip, and get replaced by faster 5G phones. Samsung (and others) will need to develop even leaner production and hold the costs of manufacturing to an absolute minimum.