Yole and its partner company Knowmade have released two new technology reports dedicated to active and passive antennas and their ecosystems (Active and Passive Antenna Systems for Telecom Infrastructure report and Antenna for 5G and 5G-related Applications Patent Landscape report).
According to this latest research, the RF front end market for telecom infrastructure we be shaken up the new technology of active antenna systems. In 2018, Yole estimated the RF front end market was worth $1.47 billion and it thinks it will reach $2.52 billion in 2025.
5G is expected to hit the market by 2020. Yole thinks it will have strong repercussions on the current RF industry with the development of many innovative technologies such as MIMO, massive MIMO, beamforming, beam steering, carrier aggregation, and others
“It was only in 2014 that the term '5G' began appearing in patents”, explains Paul Leclaire, technology and patent analyst, Knowmade. “Since then, the number of 5G-related patent publications has seen a huge increase. At Knowmade, we see a 113 percent growth rate between 2014 and 2018. This strong acceleration is mostly pushed by the Chinese IP players, which account for more than 56 percent of the IP activity in this sector. In particular, we have noticed a large number of Chinese academic players, which is quite unusual in the telecom domain.”
Today, the IP landscape related to the development of 5G antennas is still unsettled. “With more than 75 percent of patent applications still pending, much will change in the coming years,” comments Nicolas Baron, Knowmade's CEO. “Indeed, after an initial period of domestic patent applications, the main IP and market players including Samsung, Intel, Ericsson, and Huawei have begun extending their portfolios worldwide. Samsung and Intel appear to be the two leaders currently best-positioned to limit their main competitors' patenting activity and freedom-to-operate.”