Everyone knows that the United States is the world's technology leader, and the world's most well-known technology companies are basically from the United States. For example, Apple of consumer electronics, Microsoft of the dominant operating system, Facebook of the community platform and so on.
It can be said that in addition to the dollar and the military, technology is the most powerful weapon of the United States. But what is strange is that the United States, which is leading in almost every field of science and technology, has appeared in the place where science and technology must be fought for, and there are weak underbelly in communication equipment.
What's going on? To talk about this weakness of the United States in communication equipment, we have to start with 5G. We all know that mobile communications have crossed from the 1G era to the 5G era, and every time they span a generation, communication technology will produce a qualitative leap.
Take 4G to 5G, 5G is the fifth generation of mobile communication technology, compared to 4G, 5G communication has the characteristics of large broadband, latency and wide connection. Whether it is the communication speed or the amount of information transmitted, it is more than 10 times that of 4G.
For us ordinary people, the biggest difference between using 4G and 5G is that we will feel that the speed of internet access has become much faster. But in fact, in the 4G era alone, our mobile phone network system can basically meet our daily needs.
The real benefit of 5G is not in the speed of information transmission, but in the amount of information transmitted, and the increase in information tolerance is the key to the further development of the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things.
It can be said that only by realizing 5G communication can we enter the era of the Internet of Everything. 5G is the foundation and prerequisite for the next industrial revolution.
Take the express delivery industry, the increase in information transmission can make the data collection of express delivery more complete, and the transportation and inventory management of mail can be more reasonably planned. In the future, when we enter the era of the Internet of Everything, the production efficiency of society will be greatly improved, people's lives will be more convenient, and economic development will be more vibrant.
The premise of realizing the Interconnection of All Things is to increase the transmission of data, and it can be said that 5G is the ticket to step into the future world. To develop 5G, it is necessary to develop communication equipment, while the United States is in this field and is in a backward position. In terms of the global 5G communication equipment market share in 2020, Huawei accounted for 32%, Sweden's Alicese accounted for 29%, Nokia accounted for 19%, the fourth place is ZTE, and the fifth place is South Korea's Samsung.
Although Huawei has been suppressed by the United States in recent years, in the communication equipment industry, Huawei still firmly occupies a leading position in the world and has been performing very well. Among the global communication equipment companies, we can clearly see that there is no company in the United States that can rank on the list.
But as the birthplace of the communication industry, why did the communication industry in the United States fall into today's embarrassing situation, which must start from the history of the development of the communication industry.
The earliest communication technology in history originated in the military, and during World War II, the most well-known device was called the SCR-300.
This kind of thing is the scene we often see in war movies, a communication soldier facing a huge iron lump, and this iron lump is a device that can achieve wireless communication, and we can call this way of communication 0G.
After the end of the war, the military's wireless communication technology began to turn civilian, and the American Motorola company, in this field of the first force, they developed the first mobile phone in the 1980s, this mobile phone at the time price of 10,000 US dollars, to charge 10 hours to achieve 30 minutes of call, it can be said that the ultra-short talk time plus the long charging time, making this mobile phone itself very impractical.
At that time, the biggest problem faced by the world's communication was that the communication standards of various countries were different, which made it difficult for mobile phones to pass information to each other and achieve freedom of call.
To this end, Europe decided in 1983 to unify communication standards, the introduction of the global mobile communication system DSM, in order to unify the communication standards of various countries, after which the world communications entered the 2G era, and later in the 1990s, the European continent began to set up DSM networks, and in 1992 launched the first gsm mobile phone, Nokia 1011.
In just 10 short years, the gsm network has spread to 162 countries around the world and is used by more than 100 million people, when Europe vigorously developed the communications industry in the 80s and 90s, what was the United States doing?
The United States has made a very strange operation, they have split the largest telecommunications equipment company in the country, AT&T, and since the split of AT&T, the domestic communications companies in the United States can be described as a group of heroes.
A large number of small communication operators, because of their own lack of strength, can only rely on the mature 1G network, the result is that Europe has long been unified standards. The United States has three models operating at the same time, making it difficult for Motorola, which took over AT&T, to let go.
Even, once the world's leading mobile phone company, Motorola, can only stay in the 1G era, using this old technology to compete with international communications giants, so Motorola is gradually in the commercial competition, by Nokia and Edison crushed.
Later, although the United States also developed 2G technology, that is, Qualcomm's CDMA, Motorola also followed up with 2G technology later, but after all, Europe started earlier than the United States in the field of 2G, and the development was faster than the United States.
In the field of 2G has taken the lead, CDMA is ultimately inferior to GSM, so in 1997, Motorola's performance began to decline year by year, the market share also fell from 50% to 17%, nokia pressed on the ground and rubbed hard. However, even if the 2G war is lost, Qualcomm's CDMA in the 3G era once had the upper hand.
This is because Qualcomm was in a leading position in the world in patents at that time, and there was a patent wall at Qualcomm's California headquarters, which was hung with Qualcomm, and nearly 1,400 patents in the field of communications.
After owning many patents, Qualcomm has hired a large number of lawyers, who continue to acquire communication-related patents on the one hand, and constantly sue opponents for infringement on the other hand. Relying on a large number of patents, Qualcomm has also made a lot of money in the 3G era.
Because Qualcomm has too many patents in the field of 3G, if major companies use 3G networks, they can only pay Qualcomm a large amount of patent royalties, which is also known as Qualcomm Tax. So in order to get rid of this expensive high-pass tax, the industry also began to jointly exclude CDMA.
Qualcomm's absolute advantage in the field of communications has gradually disappeared. So that when the 4G era came, the U.S. communications industry was in a backward position. Today, when the world's communications industry enters the 5G era from 4G, American communication equipment companies can hardly see the traces of existence.
In fact, throughout the history of the development of the U.S. communications industry, at the beginning, the United States was indeed in the leading position in the communications industry, but the anti-monopoly law of the United States dismantled AT&T, the largest telecommunications equipment company in the United States, and changed the ecological pattern of the U.S. communications industry. So much so that in the most critical formulation of communication standards, it is far behind Europe.
Although in the 3G era, Qualcomm has set off a new wave, Qualcomm basically does not involve the field of equipment, but has taken a short path and focused its energy on patents. To make money through patent fees, in fact, in terms of the strength of the United States, it is not difficult to build a leading communication equipment company, but the biggest constraint restricting the development of the communication equipment industry in the United States is profit.
Because high-tech manufacturing is a high-cost, low-return industry, especially telecommunications equipment, the return is often very low. Selling mobile phones is more profitable than selling telecommunications equipment. At present, the distribution of the United States in the communications industry is also the same, such as the United States has excellent mobile phone companies such as Apple, but there is no excellent communication equipment companies such as Huawei.
This is also why in recent years, the United States has repeatedly attacked Huawei and ZTE.
After all, 5G is the key to the development of future industries