China's mobile phone brands are in a rush to lead the coming 5G era, which an expert said is likely to genuinely arrive in 2020.
Pete Lau, CEO of Chinese mobile phone maker OnePlus, made a tweet on Friday using a 5G signal, which he called the "the world's first 5G tweet."
In August, he made the first "5G call," Lau said in another tweet on Friday.
According to a statement sent by a PR representative of OnePlus to the Global Times on Sunday, OnePlus set up a 5G project as early as 2016 and set up a 5G lab in June this year.
Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, had announced that it would launch 5G commercial mobile phones in 2019, according to the statement.
Huawei is also poised to launch its first mobile phones backed with 5G technology in 2019, a senior Huawei executive said during this year's 2018 Summer Davos Forum in North China's Tianjin.
But Xiang Ligang, a telecommunications expert, said that so far it's hard to say which domestic mobile phone company will lead the 5G era.
"Experiments on 5G networks have not been completed and no companies have launched 5G phones so far. The real deployment time has not yet arrived," Xiang told the Global Times on Sunday.
An executive of a domestic mobile phone brand told the Global Times on condition of anonymity on Sunday that "Chinese phonemakers are all making 5G phones," denying that any company had a special advantage.
But according to Xiang, it won't be long before 5G phones will be publicly sold.
"Now 5G indoor experiments, outdoor experiments and main street experiments have all been done. Main city experiments are under way, and next year some user testing will be launched, with users testing 5G mobile phones and reporting problems to the operators. I guess 5G mobile phone launch is likely to explode in 2020," Xiang said.
He also stressed that in terms of 5G mobile phones, China is very likely to be the leader in the world.
This view has already been expressed in several overseas media reports, saying that China is winning the 5G race against such countries as the U.S.
"China has already surpassed the U.S. in 4G popularization. There are about 4 million 4G base stations in China while there are only about 30,000 base stations in the U.S., which means that there are no phone signals in many remote districts in the U.S.," Xiang said.
