BARCELONA—AT&T and Verizon dominated the 5G headlines earlier this year, but there are good signs for Sprint at MWC19, and the price of 5G phones in general. Chatting with lower-cost chipmaker MediaTek, I heard about a move toward more budget-friendly 5G phones next year that Sprint can really benefit from.
For now, 5G phones are going to cost a premium. While none of the US 5G models have prices yet, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Krishan Sharma found out that LG's V50 will have a "5G tax" of AU$500 ($358 USD) over other flagship smartphones, for a total price of AU$1999 ($1,433). But next year, MediaTek could cause a real shift in that number.
"Especially in China, we believe the 5G smartphone will happen not only in the flagship segment; it's highly possible to go into the 3000RMB ($450) segment," MediaTek CEO Joe Chen said.
MediaTek plays a key role in the US market. To connect to any network, you need a modem. There are five major companies working on 5G modems that I know of right now—Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, Huawei, and MediaTek. Samsung and Huawei don't sell their modems in the US. Intel, so far, has focused on Apple flagships. That makes MediaTek Qualcomm's prime competitor in the US Android world, and in the past MediaTek has helped drive down the prices of 4G devices. It's likely to do the same for 5G.
MediaTek's first 5G chipset, which will launch in China during the first half of 2020 and go global in the second half of 2020, will support standalone and non-standalone networks under 6GHz, Chen said. That's prime for Sprint, but leaves AT&T and Verizon out in the cold. Carriers with big millimeter-wave networks, such as AT&T and Verizon, will have to wait until 2021, he said.
"Right now, we are able to deliver our 4G product through all four major operators in the US. If those operators have sub-6 solutions in 2020, we will go after them," he said.
T-Mobile is in an interesting position here: It will be mostly sub-6, but with small areas of millimeter wave in key cities like Los Angeles and New York. And, of course, if Sprint and T-Mobile merge, everything just goes back in the blender.
Earlier at the show, Sprint lept ahead of AT&T and Verizon by offering coverage maps for its nine-city 5G rollout in May and June. While AT&T and Verizon both pledge to cover various numbers of cities, they refuse to give any maps or details on real coverage areas.
Even if MediaTek 5G phones don't quickly come out in the US, the company is working to build a competitive 5G ecosystem that doesn't depend solely on one company's components, the way Qualcomm and Huawei try to make phones use their top-to-bottom RF stacks.
"We're working with Oppo, Vivo, Corvo, and Skyworks to make RF a more standardized piece with 5G, so you can get devices to market faster by not building a too-different spec on the front end," Chen said.