With an increase in their disposable income, people are purchasing smartphones in large numbers. Such consumer electronics offer multiple internet-enabled features, such as email access, location-based services, weather updates, and shopping capabilities. Moreover, people are using their smartphones for ordering food, streaming music and videos online, social networking, and many other purposes. For enabling these services, it is important that the mobile device enjoys smooth connectivity to the network infrastructure. In addition, with the increasing usage of high-bandwidth applications on mobile phones, it is also important to have a high data transmission speed.
As per P&S Intelligence, the rising demand for smartphones will be a key factor to drive the 5G radio-frequency (RF) transceiver market from $112.0 million in 2019 at a massive 30.4% CAGR between 2020 and 2030. This is because it is the transceiver that allows a smartphone to receive and send signals, be it of regular wireless calls or internet traffic. In this era where smartphones are becoming more than a mobile phone, transforming into personal assistants, older technologies, including 2G, 3G, and even 4G, are becoming ineffective. Thus, countries around the world are upgrading their telecommunication infrastructure by integrating 5G RF transceivers.
Among the countries at the forefront of the 5G revolution are China, South Korea, and India, where governments have begun inking deals with telecom component providers to get their infrastructure 5G-ready. For instance, Chinese electronics giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. signed 25 memoranda of understanding (MoU) with national telecom service providers for sales and trials of its 5G equipment, including RF transceivers, in 2018. A year later, three Chinese state-owned telecom service providers — China Telecommunications Corporation, China Mobile Limited, and China Unicom Limited — launched 5G services.
Apart from mobile phones, 5G RF transceivers are also integrated in base stations, which, ultimately, all phones, wired and wireless, communicate with. In this regard, the growth of the telecom sector around the world is fueling the demand for such components. With the demand for faster data transmission and clearer voice rising from the expanding telecom consumer base in the U.K., the U.S., South Korea, and China, these countries are rapidly upgrading their base stations to 5G. For instance, since the 5G service rollout in China in 2019, over 86,000 compatible base stations have been set up, reflecting a huge rise in the number of 5G RF transceivers installed.