The number of commercially-available 5G devices on the market jumped 20 percent in a single month, according to the latest update from the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA). At end-July, there were 162 of these devices for sale, up from 135 at the end of June, GSA said in its August members report.
Including regional variants and upgrade options, the number of 5G devices announced, by 91 separate vendors, stood at 364 at the end of July, up 82 percent from the 200 announced by January, GSA said.
Of the devices announced at end-July, 113 were phones, up 27 from a month earlier, of which at least 113 are now commercially available, up 18 from June. Three of these phones are upgraded to offer 5G using an adapter.The devices recorded came in 18 different form factors: phones, head-mounted displays, hotspots, indoor CPE, outdoor CPE, laptops, modules, snap-on dongles/adapters, industrial grade CPE/routers/gateways/modems, drones, robots, tablets, TVs, cameras, USB modems, a switch, a vehicle OBU and a vending machine.
CPE devices made up 94 of the total, including enterprise grade CPE/routers/gateways) and there were 55 5G modules, 23 hotspots, 5 laptops and 25 other devices.
In terms of spectrum support, GSA obtained data concerning 81 percent of the announced 5G devices: 75.5 percent of these support sub-6 GHz spectrum bands and 22.3 percent support mmWave, with 16.8 percent supporting both.
Among devices commercially available at the end of July, 19 percent support services operating in mmWave spectrum, while 87 percent support sub-6 GHz spectrum.
All announced 5G devices suppport the n78, n41, n79, n77, n1 and n3 bands and at end-July, bands n1 and n77 were both supported by over 100 devices.
GSA expects commercially-available devices to approach the 200 mark by the end of September 2020 but warned that the impact of the Covid-19 crisis could affect this launch estimate.
