Following news that Qualcomm and Apple settled their mobile phone licensing dispute: 

Lynnette Luna, Principal Technology Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view on the development:

“The end of the bitter licensing dispute between Qualcomm and Apple will have a significant impact on the burgeoning 5G market. Prior to this settlement, Apple was relying on Intel’s 5G modem to bring a 5G smartphone to market. It was questionable whether Apple would have been able to achieve this by 2020, and this is confirmed by the fact that Intel immediately announced its intention to exit the 5G modem market.

“The iPhone has tremendous clout in the wireless market. Once Apple bets on a new technology, it has the market power to move that technology forward and that is definitely the case for 5G; the industry needs a 5G-enabled iPhone to achieve growth in 2020.

“5G will experience a slow burn throughout most of 2019. It’s not until 2020 that we will see 5G networks having more widespread availability and improved 5G smartphone silicon. This will be the right timing for Apple to enter the market as the company likes to see some momentum behind a particular technology rather than being the first to adopt it.”