The company already disclosed that some of its close partners including Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft are planning to have an Intel 5G-equipped PCs late in 2019. No matter how hard we tried, we could not find any phone manufacturers trusting Intel with its 5G smartphone transition.
Apple will be first, and from where we see it, the only Intel 5G modem adopter. Apple counts that its costumers will stay loyal to the iPhone cult and it will give them 5G when the company sees fit.
Traditionally Apple was late to 3G, 4G and it will most likely be late to 5G as well. Carriers don’t really like it but there is not much that they can do to strong arm Apple. The issue for the carriers/telecoms of the world is as soon as they deploy the 5G infrastructure, they want to put this huge investment of spectrum and infrastructure, electricity and rent to good use.
Gigabit LTE gateway to 5G
According to initial projections, 5G download and upload speeds will actually free up the network capacities just as well as the 4G capacities are getting free with the Gigabit LTE implementation. Europe was slower to adopt but some early adopters including Telstra in Australia and Verizon, T Mobile, AT&T and Sprint in the US.
These guys get it - but so far more than 40 carriers in more than 28 countries have adopted Gigabit LTE. The number keeps growing and having Carrier Aggregation, 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM is the key element of making network Gigabit LTE ready. All these technologies will play a crucial role in the 5G revolution that starts in 2019.
Apple’s iPhone 2020, will most likely come with 5G support. Apple simply wants to enter a bit more mature market as 5G is expected to have fast growth in developed markets. Since Apple controls the minds of its customers, they won't care about 5G until Apple tell them that this matters. Through the years, Apple came late to the game with many things and its customers believed that they invented everything.
The last three obvious ones were the bezel less design, OLED scree and wireless charging. All three were in the market a year, sometimes years, before Apple decided to go down that road.
