50 carriers worldwide have 5G services by now

2019 may be marked as the year that the '5G era' began. It has seen the roll-out of 3GPP-compliant services offering these new bands on the part of 50 carriers across 27 different markets. Furthermore, a total of 328 other carriers in 109 markets had also at least started to invest in the necessary technology to do the same by October 2019.

In addition, a total of 183 5G-enabled devices (which ranged from personal devices to customer-premises equipment (CPE)) had been launched by 72 different OEMs by mid-November 2019, about 40 of which are available on the market. Statistics such as these are found in the new whitepaper on the subject of "Intelligent Connectivity", published by the OEM OPPO and the market research group IHS Markit

The term "intelligent connectivity" refers to networking powered by applications and techniques such as AI, cloud, edge and internet of things (IoT). The paper's authors believe that further 5G deployment and uptake will be driven by this type of connectivity, and also vice-versa.

IHS Markit and OPPO have also reported that, of the 1.7 billion smartphones estimated to ship globally by 2023, about 25% will support 5G. Similarly, up to 2 of every 3 smartphones to be shipped by 2025 will come with hardware and other specs specifically designed to support AI built-in.