You could read this between the lines when Samsung announced the new alliance and the new cross-licensing deal with Qualcomm a week ago.
Samsung is, without a doub,t the biggest company in the Android space and the biggest competitor to Apple and having it on board with the 5G NR from Qualcomm is the great tailwind in the fight for dominance in the 5G market.
Qualcomm announced that OEMs such as Asus, Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Connected Technologies Limited, HMD Global – the home of Nokia phones, HTC, Inseego/Novatel Wireless, LG, NetComm Wireless, NETGEAR, OPPO, Sharp Corporation, Sierra Wireless, Sony Mobile, Telit, Vivo, Wingtech, WNC, Xiaomi and ZTE will be ready with the devices in 2019 using the Snapdragon X50 NR modem.
Carriers like AT&T, British Telecom, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, KT Corporation, LG Uplus, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Singtel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Telstra, TIM, Verizon and Vodafone Group will conduct the trials, which will be based on the 3GPP Release 15 5G NR standard.
Intel is doing trials starting as of today for the Korean Olympics and KT Telekom, but these demos are not based on the 3GPP official 5G NR standard and the fact that Samsung has officially sided with Qualcomm means a lot for this effort.
It is safe to assume that the Samsung Galaxy S9 will come with the Snapdragon 845 at least for the China, USA and Japan markets and then the next Galaxy in line will come with the 5G NR standard, supporting this new network from its earliest days. Of course, it is not Qualcomm’s job to announce Samsung future products but the new cross-licensing agreement is a good indicator of how things will play in the future.
It would be an understatement to say this is a big win for Qualcomm. Samsung is the biggest win you can get in the Android space. It gets better than that as China’s leading manufacturers have sided with Qualcomm too.
Remember that China has Huawei and HiSilicon and they still prefer to enter the 5G NR (New Radio) era with Qualcomm. Bear in mind that some of these players, let's chose Xiaomi, not only grew incredibly in China, they became an overnight success in India too. Not sure when the last time you checked the headcount in these countries but China is estimated to have 1.35 billion people while India is close to this with 1.35 billion inhabitants.
Lenovo, Oppo, Vivo, Xiami, ZTE, and Wingtech with Qualcomm X50 5G NR devices in 2019 is definitely a great opportunity and China is determined to get into the 5G NR endeavors with Qualcomm as early as 2019 for a commercial launch.