The cell tower that is providing the signal that you may be using to read this article could be made by the very same company that made the phone receiving said signal. Two of the top cell equipment manufacturers in the world are Huawei and Nokia. Samsung is a player in the business, but not as big as some of its rivals. Traditionally, Samsung has been a fairly minor player in the wireless networking market and has been a bit late with jumping on new technologies like LTE, having backed WiMax and CDMA in the past, only to see them catch their stride in extremely limited markets. By pouncing on the 5G market early, however, they’re hoping to change all of that by getting in on the ground floor with a brand new standard that, for all intents and purposes, has no reason to flop or fail to spread.
5G is still very much in utero, not even having a fully defined standard at this time. While FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wants to begin talks to open up spectrum for 5G in the U.S., other countries are still working on getting the technology planned out. Early 5G tests, conducted using special temporary licenses from local radio authorities, have been showing incredible speeds, with equipment manufactured by the likes of Nokia and Ericsson. Samsung has yet to manufacture any 5G equipment and is hoping that a partnership with Verizon will help them to catch up by giving them a jumpstart in the U.S., the current top potential market for 5G network technologies.
Having sunk to fifth place in the 4G market, Samsung is betting big on 5G to bring their overall position on the wireless landscape up into the top 3 and will be making a big push for 5G equipment to that end. Given 5G’s powerful, but short-range nature, Samsung sees dollar signs in the business market, where 5G can replace and outright disrupt the fixed wireless and wired networking businesses that rule the enterprise sector right now. They hope to begin their 5G invasion by selling home-brewed base transceiver stations and home equipment, with a goal in sight of an $8.6 billion.