Building the 5G Ecosystem
Thus far, the evolution of the Internet has been marked by two explosions: the proliferation of PCs and websites in the late nineties, and the rise of smartphones and mobile apps in the late naughts.
A third explosion is set to begin soon. But this time, the applications won’t be confined to devices with screens. Every machine with an Internet connection will be involved. Huawei expects 90 billion of them by 2025.
5G will be a catalyst for this next explosion.
As you might expect, HUAWEI will help build the network infrastructure. But HUAWEI also hopes to develop a 5G ecosystem where these new applications can evolve and thrive. That’s why HUAWEI created Wireless X Labs.
5G must be revolutionary
5G must be more than a medium for high-speed, low-latency communication. Instead, it must be a platform for innovation, partnership, and entrepreneurship.
This is where HUAWEI Wireless X Labs comes in. HUAWEI plans to build a platform for research, development, and market-making for the next 10,000 killer apps. With this innovation platform, HUAWEI Wireless X Labs will develop innovative products and solutions for industries, support the way people live and work, and serve enterprises. In support of these efforts, Wireless X Labs was created to bring together operators, technology providers, and vertical industry partners.
Initially the lab will focus on three domains:
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the world’s 3.9 billion individual mobile users
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the 800 million households that will receive broadband wirelessly by 2020
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the industries seeking to create value from an expected 90 billion connected IoT devices by 2025.
In pursuing this agenda, HUAWEI Wireless X Labs partnering with the best and brightest across many industries, including Audi, DJI, General Electric, IBM, Kuka Robotics, and Vodafone.
In the near future HUAWEI Wireless X Labs is focusing on four applications – Cloud AR/VR, Drones, Robotics, and Vehicles.
Cloud AR/VR
By 2025, Goldman Sachs expects the AR/VR market to reach US$182 billion, making it a bigger industry than television.
Drones
Drones can be used for many purposes, and HUAWEI expects this market to double its current value to more than US$250 billion by 2020. HUAWEI Wireless X Labs is engaged in drone innovation that’s close to the hearts of our telecom customers. Some operators use drones to survey hard-to-reach network assets on roofs and hilltops but are hindered by range limitations and issues with line-of-sight control. If drones were connected to a 5G network, they could do much more.
Wireless X Labs recently sent a drone on a trip of 1500 kilometers from Shanghai to Guangzhou, under the control of China Unicom’s mobile network. HUAWEI Wireless X Labs also works on wireless charging of drones at base stations to make such long-range applications more common. Wireless X Labs want drones to do more than just circle a non-functioning base station with a camera. It wants them to collect data from it and create an analysis report, as HUAWEI has already done in a pilot with China Mobile.
Robotics
Wireless X Labs is working on robotics for multiple areas, including manufacturing. The market for the Industrial Internet is estimated at USD 900 billion, and there is great potential for mobility to create value in this industry. Current robotics applications are resource-intensive, so they depend heavily on wired connections. Moving them to wireless network control could reduce energy consumption by 10%, and cut cabling and maintenance costs in half.
Wireless X Labs is also looking forward to expanding the use of robotics at home. China has a rapidly aging population and faces a shortage of 1 million nurses. Other countries are in similar situations. We estimate that smart robots will be in 12% of homes by 2025. Many will perform the functions that Wireless X Labs is creating robots to do today – telemedicine, remote health diagnosis, delivery of food and medication, and communication with other in-home medical devices.
Vehicles
Self-driving cars are the poster child for 5G, but many of today’s autonomous vehicles do not depend on mobile networks to function: the AI is in the car. However, as with AR/VR headsets, the computing workload must eventually move from the user terminal to the Cloud.
HUAWEI recently demonstrated the remote driving of a car via 5G technology (controlled by a person 30 kilometers away). This demonstrates the real-time speed and latency capabilities of 5G. But the true goal is self-driving, and HUAWEI’s engineers are working on that with partners’ engineers at our lab in Germany.
Because like the Smartphone and PC before it, 5G will reshape the world, its disruptive potential magnified by the diversity and volume of the terminals it will connect. Killer apps could come from any source, shake up any industry, and leverage any connected device.
Hence the “X” of Wireless X Labs– building an ecosystem of new possibilities.
William Xu
