Summary
This IDC Market Forecast analyzes network equipment spending and total capex, including Asia/Pacific's nonequipment structures and facilities in both fixed line and mobile networks."At the end of 2021, with over 1 billion 5G connections, Greater China formed a significant portion of global 5G subscribers, 5G capex, and IoT cellular connections. The first phase of 5G is essentially completed. This was to provide 5G coverage colocated at 4G sites, and the next phase will be to ensure better coverage by adding small cells and deploying higher order massive multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) in macro sites. 5G data usage in the PRC has surpassed 15GB per month as of April 2022, and average revenue per user (ARPU) figures appear to have stabilized in increasing, with monthly data consumption set to continue growing at greater than 21-22% per annum. For operators, another important direction is the introduction of enterprise 5G services over the next three years across many industries, including manufacturing, retail, utilities, consumer, and transportation. Consumer AR/VR is still several years away from mass adoption," says Bill Rojas, adjunct research director, IDC Asia/Pacific.
