OMDIA ranks South Korea as top global 5G market

New research from leading analyst firm Omdia has again ranked South Korea as the leading country for 5G deployment.

The findings taken from Omdia’s from Global 5G Progress Update, March 2020 research assessed the deployment progress of 5G based on operator launches, network coverage, subscriber take-up as well as 5G spectrum availability and regulatory eco-system for 22 countries. This report updates Omdia’s initial 5G progress assessment to December 2019.

South Korea has established itself as the early market leader for 5G technology deployment, followed by Switzerland, and then Kuwait. The USA ranks fourth, China in sixth and the UK in seventh place.

South Korea’s adoption has already reached 5.88 million users at the end of March 2020, accounting for almost 10% of the wireless services market. However, South Korea is being challenged for breadth of market coverage following increased coverage rollouts by Sunrise and Swisscom in Switzerland, Ooredoo and Vodafone in Qatar and Kuwait.

Omdia principal analyst Stephen Myers commented: “The global market is steadily gearing up for 5G deployment but right now South Korea is leading the way – although markets like Switzerland have also made steady progress.

“Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, we are seeing governments and regulators pushing ahead with their allocation of 5G spectrum and operators continue to launch and expand 5G network coverage.

“We can expect to see a much larger number of commercial 5G launches in major global markets in the next 12-18 months as more spectrum is released across the world.”