Qualcomm has today confirmed that at least nineteen OEMs have agreed to employ the use of the Snapdragon X50 modem in some of their mobile devices due for release in 2019. The details in this announcement do not go into specifics and so there is no firm information on which devices will make use of the Snapdragon X50 modem, with those details likely to be announced by the various OEMs in due course and much closer to the time of release.
However, the announcement does disclose the OEMs who have so far committed to using the 5G NR-based modem and these include the likes of ASUS, HMD (Nokia), HTC, OPPO, LG, Sony, VIVO, Xiaomi, and ZTE. Not only are these just some of the announced OEMs, but even the full list of now-confirmed companies are unlikely to be the true full list – as some OEMs will inevitably want to keep aspects relating to their upcoming devices kept secret for now. Therefore it is safer to assume this is the minimal number of OEMs who have – as of today – committed to using the Snapdragon X50 modem, in at least one of their devices, due for release next year. In addition, with the onset of 5G, more devices will become mobile in general (‘always connected’ PCs being a case in point) and therefore it should not be assumed all of the mentioned companies will be specifically releasing smartphones. With the current announcement simply detailing these OEMs have committed to using the X50 modem in upcoming mobile-based devices.
More broadly speaking, this announcement represents only half of the X50-related announcements made today as Qualcomm has also now confirmed a significant number of global mobile operators will have used the X50 modem for mobile 5G NR trials before the end of this year. The two announcements when taken together are designed to highlight how at both the operator and OEM level, Qualcomm is already garnering substantial (and collective) support for what it sees as the modem which will enable 5G connections on the first wave of compatible devices. At which point owners of these compatible devices can expect to benefit from significantly increase download speeds (multi-gigabit per second), greater data capacities, and lower latency.