At a press conference earlier today, Qin Fei, General Manager of Vivo Communications Research Institute, claims that the company has plans to launch at least five 5G devices in 2020, with a bigger focus on the low cost and mid-range market. According to him, Vivo’s strategy will be to focus on making 5G devices cheaper so consumers have more options.
To that end, Vivo has been working closely with Qualcomm to reduce the costs of producing 5G devices. The current goal is to release a sub 2000 RMB ($286) 5G device in China. At present, the iQOO Pro 5G is the most affordable 5G device at 3698 yuan ($528), while the Vivo NEX 3 5G is priced at 5698 yuan ($813). Releasing a 5G device at the targeted price would make 5G much more attainable for the standard consumer.
The latest release of the “IDC China Smartphone Market Monthly Tracking Report” shows that as of September 2019, China’s 5G mobile phone shipments totaled in at approximately 485,000 shipped units. Among them, Vivo ranked first in China’s 5G mobile phone market share in the third quarter, accounting for 54.3% of 5G smartphone sales.
Liu Sitai, vice president of Qualcomm and President of Qualcomm in Taiwan and Southeast Asia said that 2019 was a great year for 5G, and pointed out that “(commercial) release time is one year earlier than expected, and it happens now.” This would be a monumental step in making 5G more affordable, and we’re definitely looking forward to it.
