A high-ranking Huawei executive has raised the question on the speed of 5G mobile telecommunication integrated chips announced by Samsung Electronics, causing controversy.
As soon as Samsung Electronics unveiled its 5G mobile processor called 'Exynos 980', which combines 5G-enabled telecommunication modem and high-performance mobile application processor into one, Huawei raised a question on the same day, which is very unusual given Huawei's previous practice of refraining from evaluating products of other companies.
"I saw a manufacturer (Samsung Electronics) unveiled the Exynos 980 today," Huawei's Vice President Li Xiaolong said on Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, on Sept. 4(Local time)
“A company said that this chip supports download speed of up to 2.55Gbps for frequencies below 6GHz (Gigahertz), which is a 5G network environment,” he said. “However, according to R-15 protocol standards for 3GPP (Mobile Communication International Standardization Organization), theoretical maximum speed of 100MHz (MHz) band is 2.34Gbps, and Qualcomm, Huawei and others announced the maximum speed of 2.3Gbps. A certain manufacturer seems to have had a miracle overcoming these limitations," he sarcastically said.
Samsung Electronics announced earlier in the day that it will support speeds of up to 2.55Gbps in 5G environments and up to 1.0Gbps in 4G environments. It also hinted at a "speed battle," saying it will supply samples to customers starting this month and start mass-producing the chips by the end of this year.
By releasing commercialization cards at a similar time as Qualcomm, which is the No. 1 mobile integrated chip industry, Samsung seems to target pre-emptive effects.
Currently, 5G mobile semiconductor markets are separately equipped with modem chips for telecommunication and Qualcomm effectively dominates the market. However, industries predict that Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, and Huawei will have a three-way race when markets are commercialized in earnest after next year.
