MWC Shanghai 2021 took place this week using a Hybrid event format so was the first in-person trade show for the industry this year. They expected about 200 exhibitors and about 20,000 visitors, about a third or the normal amount, so it will be interesting to see the actual counts when they are reported.

As soon as the iPhone 12/12 Pro were released, IFIXIT did a live video of the teardown to see which chips and components made it into the US version phone. Find out which RF modules that were identified in the teardown.

Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon just released a quarterly update video yesterday covering 5G rollouts, legal updates and new products and partnerships. Here is a quick summary:

When we started 5G network deployments, it was planned to first implement 5G non-standalone (NSA) networks that used 4G infrastructure followed by standalone (SA) 5G networks that are separate, complete 5G networks. This year marks the first release of 5G SA networks as GSA has identified 47 operators in 24 countries worldwide that have been investing in public 5G SA networks (in the form of trials, planned or actual deployments). In addition, a number of these are testing or deploying 5G standalone technologies for private networks.

Tracking the roll out of 5G, the August 2020 GSA report said the number of announced 5G devices has continued to climb quickly. In January 2020, the number of announced 5G devices exceeded 200 for the first time; by end-July 364 devices had been announced, of which 162 were understood to be commercially available (up from 135 at the end of June).

I attended the virtual IMS2020 event this week and wanted to highlight some of the significant product announcements I saw in the news plus review the 5G Summit and closing ceremony.