Patents offer a glimpse into what might be, and even what will be, as new technologies make the leap from concept to reality.
They offer windows into the intellectual property that, in turn, translate into the competitive advantages that help companies garner market share.
To that end, and as reported by Bloomberg, Chinese tech juggernaut Huawei Technologies has been climbing the ranks of firms that have been obtaining patents in the United States.
That leapfrogging, we contend, might have far ranging implications for the connected economy at large.
The newswire noted that Huawei garnered 2,770 U.S. patents last year, as estimated by IFI Claims Patent Services, putting it at No. 5 behind IBM, and behind Samsung, Canon and Taiwan Semi Manufacturing. Those top positions represent the depth and breadth that non-U.S. companies have cemented in terms of cutting-edge technologies. The U.S. still had more than half of the patents granted last year, but China was in fourth place behind Japan and Korea.
Drilling down into the patent activity itself, and perhaps no surprise, key areas of development across the board, leading from 2020 to 2021 (and we would presume into the present) included machine learning and computing and telemedicine.
5G and Beyond
Huawei’s own recent white paper on innovation and intellectual property, though largely a general history, shows continued focus on 5G and connectivity, and notes, in one example, that “with the growing adoption of 5G in B2B domains, networks need to offer faster uplink speeds and lower latency without compromising downlink speeds.” Nikkei Asia reported last year that Huawei leads the patent market for 5G related technologies, with an estimated 18.3% share of the “global 5G patent families that have been granted and are active.”
Separately, in another research posting, Huawei said that “6G is the next-generation advanced mobile communications system, but it will go far beyond communications. 6G will serve as a distributed neural network that provides communication links to fuse the physical, cyber, and biological worlds, truly ushering in an era in which everything will be sensed, connected, and intelligent. This in turn will lay a solid foundation for Intelligence of Everything in the future.”
None of this is meant to suggest that the U.S. is precariously close to losing its dominance in the overall market, and it is no surprise that the competition from Chinese firms is heating up. For Huawei, where the company has been banned from accessing U.S. technologies for nearly three years, ramping up patent-related activity represents a way to cement position within 5G activity (ban or not). Laying the grounds for the infrastructure — or, in this case, the intellectual underpinnings of that infrastructure — is a way to do that.
In the meantime, as noted in this space this week, mobile providers continue to roll out applications and media that promote to consumers the benefits of 5G, explaining how the technology can improve many activities in their daily lives. For example, AT&T is offering new and existing 5G customers free trials of artificial intelligence (AI)-based games for mobile devices.
Read also: Mobile Operators Use Games, YouTube Show to Lure 5G Consumers
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