Who leads the global race for 5G? One way of answering this question is by analyzing the number of patents held or applied for by different companies. With more than 3,000 patent applications filed and more than 1,200 of these granted, Chinese manufacturer Huawei took first place in a ranking complied by IPlytics and the Technical University of Berlin.
As the patenting process can take several years, the statistic also reflects which companies have filed patents recently. Finnish company Nokia and South Korean enterprise Samsung have the largest share of its patents already granted – this also means they haven’t filed many recently.
Manufacturers from South Korea, a country where 5G was implemented faster than almost anywhere else, find themselves towards the top of the list, as does Chinese provider ZTE. U.S. company Intel is newer to the game, with only a fraction of its patents already granted.
