Even though there are more than 600 member companies in 3GPP, the 5G standardization process is actually led by a few leading players. New research from Strategy Analytics analyzes the contributions of industry players to 3GPP 5G standards and finds that, in 3GPP Release 15 and Release 16 so far, the 13 studied companies contributed more than 78% 5G related papers and led 77% of the 5G related Work Items and Study Items.
The report assesses the 13 leading companies’ contributions to 3GPP 5G standards for the period of Releases 15 and 16 so far, based on the following criteria:
° Volume of 5G related papers, including submitted papers, approved/agreed papers and the ratio of approved/agreed papers to total submissions in all Technical Specification Groups (TSGs) and Working Groups (WGs).
° Chairmanship positions, i.e. Chairman and Vice Chairmen for all TSGs and WGs.
° Rapporteurs of 5G related Work Items (WIs) / Study Items (SIs) in all TSGs and WGs.
The results indicate that the top five companies in 3GPP 5G standards activities are Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and China Mobile.
“3GPP plays the central role in the ecosystem of global 5G standardization,” said Guang Yang, director at Strategy Analytics. “By analyzing the contributions of industry players to 3GPP 5G standards, we can get an idea of different companies’ positions in 5G innovation as well as their influence in the global mobile industry. So we looked at 3GPP organization and work procedures to assess each company’s influence from multiple aspects.”
Sue Rudd, director, Networks and Service Platforms service, added, “According to our assessment, leading infrastructure vendors – Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia – made more significant contributions to 5G standards than other studied companies. Huawei leads in terms of overall contributions to the end-to-end 5G standards, while Ericsson leads in TSG/WG chairmanship and Nokia in approved/agreed ratio of 5G contribution papers.”