Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor

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The biggest hit at MWC19 was flexible display technology that was shown off in 2 foldable phones, the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, and in a wearable smartwatch phone from ZTE, the nubia Alpha. Read this review of the event.

Interview with professor Ted Rappaport about the deployment of 5G mmWave technology.

Canalys has been providing some nice, detailed data since the beginning of the year on smartphone shipments around the world for 2018. I have summarized their last few reports here.

According to Yole Développement, the RF GaN industry is showing high growth with a 23% CAGR between 2017 and 2023 driven mostly by telecom and defense applications. By the end of 2017, the total RF GaN market was close to US$380 million and 2023 should reach more than US$1.3 billion with an evolving industrial landscape. 

With the implementation of 4G, many companies took liberties in saying they had 4G networks even though they did not meet the performance specifications of the 3GPP standard just so they could be first to market (or at least an early provider). This is already happening now with 5G.

Microwave Journal published about a dozen educational eBooks this year and 3 of them were in our top 5 most viewed pieces of content on the web site. Topics ranged from 5G and IoT to radar and GPS plus design and test solutions for RF front ends, amplifiers and antennas.

Commercial 5G service has been formally launched in the US and Korea with the first smartphones expected before June in 2019 in both countries. 5G has certainly happened faster than expected a few years ago and should enable a year with increased activity in the IoT market. The US Defense budget is healthy in response to an increase in sophistication of the Chinese and Russian defense capabilities with solid-state technology and flexible, software driven platforms being emphasized. So we expect 2019 to be an exciting year on the editorial front with many new innovations given solid financial support in these areas and others.

Rohde & Schwarz has always been known for high end, very accurate instruments in the high frequency and high speed industry which typically translates into high cost products. Some of these high precision instruments can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But did you know that R&S has a portfolio of value class instruments with more than 100 products and 300 accessories? Some new introductions included the R&S®RTB2000 Oscilloscope, the R&S®RTM3000 Oscilloscope, the R&S®RTA4000 Oscilloscope, the R&S®FPC1500 Spectrum Analyzer and the R&S®HMP4040 Power Supply. From their recent release, here is a summary of the new value instrument additions they highlighted.

Ericsson has just released their Mobility Report Nov 2018 and on a global level, they predict major 5G network deployments from 2020 and by the end of 2024 estimate 1.5 billion 5G subscriptions for enhanced mobile broadband. They think this will account for close to 17 percent of all mobile subscriptions at that time. Since the report is more than 30 pages, I thought I would extra some of the overview and devices specific data important to the RF/microwave community.

In June, the first 5G specification was finalized as 5G NR phase I (release 15) and next year will see the completion of phase II for the 5G NR specification. 5G started in the U.S. in Oct this year when Verizon released the first commercial 5G service with the deployment of mmWave Fixed Wireless Access service in several cities. AT&T is starting the deployment of the first standards-based 5G mobile service now and T-Mobile plans to start in the first half of 2019. Although it will be several years before 5G becomes prevalent to the consumer around the world, we have to ask what’s next.