Based on an observation of upstream suppliers and downstream customers of Samsung Electronics and its associated companies in the north of Vietnam, DIGITIMES Research has found that the Korean electronics giant and its affiliated firms still rely heavily on Korea-based upstream supply chain makers.
Since 2021, Thailand has become a hub attracting investments from PCB firms looking to diversify their risks by embracing a "China+1" strategy. Many PCB manufacturers from China, Japan and Taiwan have set up plants in Thailand.
According to DIGITIMES Research's studies, NTT's innovative optical and wireless network (IOWN) initiative, aiming to use photonics technologies to realize high-speed, large-capacity, and energy-efficient communication, is in line with the Japanese government's core 6G development strategies.
The 5G mmWave spectrum licenses awarded to South Korea's top three telecom operators were revoked in fourth-quarter 2022, resulting in no 5G mmWave smartphone being launched in South Korea.
While 4G LTE remains the mainstream mobile communication technology in South Korea, the cumulative number of 5G users will likely have exceeded 30 million by the end of April 2023, narrowing the gap against 4G users. A DIGITIMES Research projection indicates that Korea's total 5G users will likely surpass 4G by the end of 2024.
South Korea identifies network industry growth as a key objective of its K-Network 2030 strategy, intending to drive cloud- and software-based network architecture transformation and increase technological independence of material, component, and equipment upstream supply chains.
South Korea's K-Network 2030 strategy aims to strengthen and upgrade the country's network infrastructure while developing energy-efficient and fail-proof systems with upgrading the backbone network being one of the major tasks.
South Korea released the K-Network 2030 strategy in February 2023, aimed at building state-of-the-art communication networks and making South Korea an ICT and Internet superpower, and DIGITIMES has studied the strategy to find out what the country is eyeing to do for the next several years.
Based on DIGITIMES Research's studies on Japan's 5G network rollout and applications across different frequency bands, the deployment of mmWave remains challenging and its population coverage is very limited at slightly above 0%.
